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THE 



CHRISTIAN PREACHER. 






YALE LECTURES FOR 1879-80. 



BY 
HOWARD CROSBY 










NEW YORK. 
ANSON D. F. RANDOLPH & COMPANY, 

9OO BROADWAY, COR. 20th ST. 




JJV4-*- 



e? 



Copyright, 1879, by 
Anson D. F. Randolph & Company. 



Edward O. Jenkins, 
Printer, 20 N. William St., New York. 



CONTENTS, 



LECTURE I. 

PAGE 

Introduction : Physical Prerequisites, ... 7 



LECTURE II. 
Mental Prerequisites, 31 

LECTURE III. 
General Knowledge.— Argumentative Power, . 63 

LECTURE IV. 
Disposition. — Manner.— Habits, . . . . .87 

LECTURE V. 
The Preacher's God ward Living, . . . .119 

LECTURE VI. 
The Preacher and the World, 147 

LECTURE VII. 
The Preacher's Relation to His Work, . . .173 



INTRODUCTION: 
PHYSICAL PREREQUISITES. 



LECTURE I. 
INTRODUCTION: PHYSICAL PREREQUISITES. 

In beginning a course of lectures on Preaching to 
the Yale Divinity School, I am fully aware of the 
very thorough and admirable way in which the sub- 
ject has been treated by the distinguished teachers 
who have preceded me in this office. Their instruc- 
tions are still fresh in your memory, and have been 
wisely put into permanency through the printed 
page, so that they will ever form a valuable portion 
of the apparatus of every theological seminary. With 
this fact before me, I deem it the part of a prudent 
expediency to treat the subject rather at its circum- 
ference than at its center, that I may avoid those 
details which have been so elaborately and exhaust- 
ively treated. If, then, I shall call your attention 
rather to the Preacher than the Preaching, his quali- 
fications, character, manner, and life, rather than the 
measure, weight, and analysis of his words, I trust I 
may be considered as still within the province as- 
signed me, and ministering to the requirements of 
this foundation. 

As I understand the intention of this system of 
lectures, it is not a disquisition, attempting to ex- 



8 THE CHRISTIAN PREACHER. 

haust the subject, that is desired, but rather the 
results of personal observation and experience in a 
long course of pastoral years, the view taken by one 
man from his own peculiar position, whatever may 
be the constituents of the peculiarity. I also under- 
stand that the lectures are addressed to students in 
divinity, and not to those equally experienced with 
the lecturer, that they are not condones ad clerum, 
but monitiones ad discipulos. 

With these two thoughts to guide me, I shall 
indulge in nothing of an abstract or investigational 
character, and doubtless shall say much that is fa- 
miliar to all. This lectureship was not designed as 
an arena where emulating sages should show their 
prowess, but as an opportunity for counsel and ad- 
vice from veterans to the new recruits ; and with the 
deep interest and affection that such a relation be- 
speaks, and a due sense of the responsibility involved, 
I trust I may have grace to address you. 

As preliminary to this course of thought, I would 
essay to correct some common errors in the use of 
words, which have much influence in forming current 
ideas and establishing false conclusions. 

The words I refer to are " altar," " priest," and 
" sanctuary," or "house of God." I can not but 
think that a careless use of these words has been 
a prolific source of evil not only in theology, but in 
the practical Christian life. We have been carried 



INTRODUCTION : PHYSICAL PREREQUISITES. g 

back to the nonage of the Church, and have re- 
nounced the bright noon of the Gospel revelation 
for the early typical twilight, in which the great 
truths regarding Christ but flit as shadowy ghosts. 

None of these words occur in the Scriptures as 
referring to the Church of Christ and its order, in 
any such sense as they are applied to the Mosaic 
Church. The altar, in the only passage where the 
word is used in relation to the Christian Church 
(Heb. xiii. 10), is Christ Himself; the priest of the 
New Testament is the individual Christian (the High- 
Priest being Christ), and the " house of God" is the 
entire spiritual Church, known by another figure as 
the body of Christ. The old dispensation thus re- 
ceives a spiritual interpretation in the new. Its types 
are fulfilled and have no succession. 

All that remains is the efcfckrjoca, with its officers of 
government and instruction, the synagogue portion of 
Israel, the temple portion having been absorbed in the 
antitypes. That synagogue portion we see existing 
from the beginning of the Mosaic dispensation, having 
its full development from the first. Before the awful 
rock of Sinai, when the ritual w T as formed and was 
about to be put into operation, we hear this com- 
mand from the Most High to His servant Moses, 
Tiaaav ~r\v ovvayu>yr\v eufcXrjoiaoov em tt\v dvpav rrjg OK7]V7Jc 
rov fiaprvpiov. I give the Greek rather than the He- 
brew, because the Christian Church received its no- 



IO THE CHRISTIAN PREACHER. 

menclature from the Greek language, and from the 
Septuagint we find exactly what the Greek equiva- 
lents of the Hebrew were. The passage I have cited 
identifies the ennXr]Gia with the avvaycjyfj, long before 
the technical synagogue had an existence. Israel, 
God's people, collected together before God for wor- 
ship and instruction, was the cvvayoyrj or EtcttXTjola. 
When the typical system which was given them had 
ceased by reason of its fulfillment in the Incarnation, 
the efCfcXrjGia or cvvayuyri still remained, the essential 
Church of God with its old ritual garment removed. 
Any use now of type-words for the e/cfcXrjGta or its 
necessary appurtenances is out of place, and only 
calculated to mislead. " Altar" suggests a sacrificial 
victim, but as this has no place in the visible Church 
of Christ, the one great Victim having been sacrificed 
once for all, we have nothing to do with the word 
" altar," any more than we have to do with the 
sacrificial knife and the blood-bowls for sprinkling. 
So the " sanctuary" or " house of God" has no 
more a visible representation, since tabernacle and 
temple are swept away, the whole Church in its spirit- 
ual character being the house of God, because it is 
the body of Christ, our Lord having declared that 
He was the true temple, in which God dwelt. The 
use of the words "sanctuary" or " house of God" 
for the building in which Christians meet for worship 
and instruction, a use unfortunately so common in 



INTRODUCTION : PHYSICAL PREREQUISITES. \\ 

our hymns and prayers and sacred discourse, conveys 
the false notion of a consecrated locality, directly at 
war with the universality of the Christian idea, and 
leading to many superstitious doctrines and usages. 
But above all is the misuse of the word " priest " 
a source of much practical and dangerous error. 
" Priest " may be etymologically "presbyter" writ 
short, but in the esteem of the public it has no such 
meaning. It is the Hebrew " cohen," the Greek 
iepevg, and has no relation whatever to the presbyter 
or elder, who is a ruler and instructor, and not a sacri- 
ficial functionary in any sense. 

The Church of Christ, in its visible form, has no 
place for altar, sanctuary, or priest. The church 
building is the place of assembly or holy convoca- 
tion, the house of synagogue, or betk-midrask. There 
the people of God gather together, and their elders 
lead them in worship, and expound to them the holy 
Scriptures. The preacher, in the ordinary use of the 
word, is the elder or presbyter, who, on these oc- 
casions, is the guide and teacher of the congregation. 
Etymologically, he is the speaker^ but in Christian 
use he is the speaker on divine subjects, as they are 
revealed in the Word of God. He may be an evan- 
gelist, going from place to place, and proclaiming the 
great saving truths of the Gospel to unbelievers, or 
he may be a settled pastor of a special flock, to whom 
he ministers the Word more minutely for their edifi- 



12 THE CHRISTIAN PREACHER. 

cation. In either case, he is also, according to the 
usage of the New Testament, a ruler in the visible 
Church. He has a determined position, to which he 
is ordained, and in which he is recognized as differing 
from his brethren. While there is no typical ritual 
in the Christian Church, there is a prescribed order, 
and we are not warranted in leaving matters of wor- 
ship and instruction to an unorganized spontaneity. 
Hdvra evaxfj^ovcog kclI Kara rd^cv ycveodo) (i Cor. xiv. 40) 
is a fundamental principle of Christ's Church, which 
forbids all meteoric irregularities and sensational sur- 
prises. 

Having thus seen the position of the preacher in 
the Church, we are prepared at once to decide that 
he is no popular haranguer or lyceum lecturer. His 
object is not to tickle the ear nor to educate his 
audience in human science or philosophy. He is 
neither sophist nor college professor. He is an officer 
of Christ's Church, to declare Christ's doctrine and 
make Christ's people more Christlike. The exalted 
character of this function is the ground of the neces- 
sity of an exalted character in the functionary. The 
fitness of things and the efficiency of his work alike 
demand that he shall be no ordinary man, but one 
raised above others in true saintliness of mind and 
manner, as well as in the profound knowledge of the 
holy Word which he preaches, and with these qualifi- 
cations he must be SiSaicTLicogj not only ready on all 



INTRODUCTION : PHYSICAL PREREQUISITES. 13 

occasions to use his knowledge for the good of others, 
but also gifted with those elements of skill by which 
he can aptly communicate truth and impress it upon 
mind and conscience. There has been a strange in- 
fatuation in the Church which has counted any man 
a fit candidate for its ministry. On one hand, if he 
be a converted man, a course of seminary study is re- 
garded as the full equipment for the holy office. This 
error is almost as harmful to the Church as the con- 
verse, where a man of ready wit and agreeable speech 
is started on a career of preaching, without regard to 
either his piety or his knowledge. Preaching is thus 
divorced from the preacher, and treated abstractly 
without its personal features. It is forgotten that 
preaching is a contact of soul with soul, and that its 
phenomena are both psychical and spiritual. The 
hearing of preaching is not to produce the same effect 
with the reading of a book, nor with the performance 
of an actor. Truth is to be presented, and the 
human voice and presence are to produce an impres- 
sion ; but these two factors together are equally re- 
moved from the book and the actor. The pious 
preacher who has no psychical qualifications is a 
mere book, and often a book poorly printed ; while 
the fluent and attractive orator, who has no piety, no 
spiritual qualifications, is a mere actor. The true 
preacher is not to be confounded with either of these, 
and yet it must be said that the Church abounds with 



14 



THE CHRISTIAN PREACHER. 



these incompetent men in its ministry. Many of the 
facts of stagnation or decay in the Church may be 
traced righteously to this source. Complaints are 
made that a church is feeble, and appeals are made to 
other churches to sustain it, when it has a pastor who 
would inflict chronic feebleness on any church. I 
will not undertake to say where the primal responsi- 
bility rests. It may be that young men are hurried 
into the ministry by personal ambition, by the expec- 
tation of social elevation, or by the mistaken advice 
of pious friends ; it may be that Boards of Education 
are too careless in examining the qualifications of 
their beneficiaries ; it may be that seminaries do not 
use a strainer with fine enough meshes, or it may be 
that church judicatories are too indulgent to the man 
to give enough heed to the minister. Wherever the 
responsibility may rest, the weakness of Zion is owing 
largely to the unfitness of her ministers. 

One common error that leads to this result is the 
treatment of the preaching -office as a profession, 
parallel with those of law and medicine. We are 
familiar with the phrase, " the three learned profes- 
sions/' and we are apt to accept it without detecting 
its pernicious fallacy. The student of law and the 
student of medicine are preparing for professions 
which are very serviceable to the race, and, doubtless, 
every right-minded student of law or medicine is glad 
that his future occupation will be in so useful a sphere ; 



INTRODUCTION : PHYSICAL PREREQUISITES, j 5 

but how few students of law or medicine ever sought 
their profession solely in order to benefit their fellow- 
man ? Their support, their wealth, their power, their 
fame — these are the objects at which they aim, and for 
which they undergo the toilsome years of study and re- 
search. Now, the ministry or preaching-office differs 
toto ccelo from these two professions in the object of 
its incumbent. The true preacher seeks neither fame 
nor wealth nor political power nor pecuniary support, 
but only the glory of God in the salvation and edifi- 
cation of souls. If a man count the ministry as a 
profession, it has at once in his mind a low, self-gainful 
character. It is a ladder for helping himself up. And 
what makes it worse than any other profession, it is 
one where a man does not trust to his own energy 
for success ; but where he throws himself upon the 
church's duty to support him. Young men go through 
the seminary and are licensed, and then claim the 
support of the Church. Great complaint is made, if 
they are not supported, that the Lord's ministers are 
neglected and the Church is remiss in its duty. These 
young men have wholly misunderstood their case. 
The Church is under no obligation whatever to sup- 
port them. If an individual church sees fit to call 
one of them to its pastoral office, or if a board or 
committee sees fit to call one of them into its service, 
that church or that board is undoubtedly under ob- 
ligation to support that man, but there the obligation 



1 6 THE CHRISTIAN PREACHER. 

ceases. The Church at large has no pecuniary obliga- 
tions toward the candidates at large or the ministers 
at large. The money question is one where the 
churches give the occupation and also the wages. 
They have to do with only such ministers as they see 
fit to employ. The rest have no pecuniary claims 
whatever. All that ordination does is to put the 
approval of the Church upon the ministrations of the 
man ordained, but no pecuniary support is involved 
in that. It is common to quote our Saviour's words, 
" The laborer is worthy of his hire," as satisfactory 
proof that every licentiate should be supported by 
the Church ; but our Lord tells us that the laborer is 
worthy of his hire, not every one who offers to be a 
laborer. Moreover, hire is a covenanted stipend, and 
not a compulsory tax. I dwell on this matter be- 
cause the error here is fruitful of evil. There are 
to-day hundreds of ministers in our country who 
ought to be at tent-making, earning their bread, but 
who, under a mistaken sense of the ministry as a paid 
profession, are wandering up and down the Church, 
beseeching support; thus degrading themselves in 
their own eyes and degrading the ministry in the 
eyes of all. To be dependent on a church's call for 
my support, is to make myself a slave. How can I, 
if called, preach faithfully in rebuke of my people's 
worldliness, if this be my spirit? In fact and in prin- 
ciple the thing is wrong. A preacher must be inde- 



INTRODUCTION : PHYSICAL PREREQUISITES, ij 

pendent, trusting to the Lord and his own energies 
for his daily support, even while he rightfully accepts 
the laborer's hire. If this idea of the ministry were 
fairly presented to every candidate at the start, a large 
number would turn back, all those who had sought 
the ministry as a comfortable means of support, and 
we should have left only those earnest, devoted souls 
whose paramount desire was to proclaim the Saviour 
and edify the Church of God. 

In these prefatory remarks I have endeavored to 
show, first, that the preacher is not a priest in any 
sense, but a teaching ruler of Christ's Church; and, 
secondly, that certain qualifications are necessary on 
the part of the man to be exalted to this important 
and sacred office. Into the details of these qualifica- 
tions I now propose to enter, and in dealing with 
these I shall first treat of those which are of the low- 
est sphere, and yet which are of equal importance as 
to efficiency with those of the highest. I refer to 
physical prerequisites. 

I. Physical prerequisites. The preacher is required 
to be ever before the people. He is the familiar form 
to old and young of his congregation, and, outside of 
large cities, to the whole community. Now, it is sadly 
true that there may be defects in the outward man 
which may incapacitate him for a leader's position, no 
matter what his mental and moral excellencies may 



1 8 THE CHRISTIAN PREACHER. 

be. The general proposition every one will approve 
on its statement. A physical defect that would 
naturally awaken painful or ludicrous emotions in an 
audience, could not be endured in a public speaker. 
However much our sympathy might be excited for 
the unfortunate man, and however much we might 
endeavor to annul the objection, the stern, unyield- 
ing law of association would rule out the afflicted 
orator from his conspicuous position. We must bow 
to the necessity, and conform to the conditions of life 
in which we are placed by a superior Power. But 
while every one is ready to approve this general prop- 
osition regarding bodily defects, many are not pre- 
pared to go so far as to put among the unworthy 
those whose defects excite neither painful nor ludi- 
crous emotions, but are simply obstacles to edification. 
And yet I can not but hold that one whose most 
prominent function it is to use his voice in a large 
assembly, must be a man neither of obscure nor fee- 
ble utterance. His words should be both clear and 
loud, that the illiterate and the old may not be left in 
doubt as to his meaning. It is most true that the 
voice can be cultivated, and that patient and wise 
training (which, however, is very rare) may overcome 
many errors in volume, tone, and enunciation ; but 
with this granted, there still are many organically de- 
fective voices that never could be made the proper 
instrument of the preacher. The weak-voiced and 



INTRODUCTION : PHYSICAL PREREQUISITES. \g 

thick-voiced should see in their infirmities a clear in- 
dication that they are not called to the preaching of 
the Gospel. 

I am not aware that sufficient attention is given to 
the use of the voice in our theological seminaries. 
The ordinary elocution teacher generally does more 
harm than good. He may induce a man to speak loud 
and distinctly, but he is very apt to make him speak 
with an affected emphasis that mars his simplicity and 
sincerity. He is apt to fill his pupil with self-conscious- 
ness in utterance, and so give him the exaggerations of 
a stage-actor. It is not the professional elocutionist 
who is needed, but a friendly critic to show a man his 
defects of utterance, and a general attention to the 
primary laws of speech. It is not so much the attain- 
ment of any positive methods of articulation and em- 
phasis, which are so likely to be mere tricks of a per- 
former, that is to be sought, as the avoidance of posi- 
tive errors caused by carelessness or slovenliness. A 
preacher should remember to use his rib muscles as 
bellows and his throat muscles as articulation-keys, 
instead of making the latter do service for both. For 
this purpose he should stand erect, and not stoop 
over his manuscript. His head should be lifted and 
his shoulders thrown back, so that his voice be not 
impeded in its course. He should pronounce each 
syllable not emphatically, but clearly, and not leave 
his audience to guess out the last words of his sen- 



20 THE CHRISTIAN PREACHER. 

tences. He should remember that he is speaking to 
a multitude, and not to a single friend by his side, 
and also that some of his audience are doubtless of 
imperfect hearing. And what is important in the de- 
livery of the discourse is also important in the 
announcement of text and hymn and chapter, points 
on which every one in the congregation ought to be 
informed, but where the minister is often so careless, 
that half his people have to ask the other half the 
number, or else neglect to join in a part of the service. 
No student should have the endorsement of seminary 
or church council until he can properly acquit himself 
in these matters, which are so generally regarded as 
of small consequence and beneath the notice of offi- 
cial criticism. If we were fitting men for mere earthly 
positions, such as the lyceum platform or the stage, 
we should insist on these fundamental requirements of 
the voice and its use. And shall we slight these re- 
quirements in the high and responsible duties of the 
Church of Christ, as if the law of fitness had no 
application there ? 

Another observation is founded on the fact that 
the duties of the constituted preacher are arduous 
and constant. It is that he must have a good phys- 
ical organization. He must be able to bear frequent 
and copious draughts upon his nervous energy, for 
his preaching involves not only the labor of prepara- 
tion, but sympathy, solicitude, and searching em- 



INTRODUCTION : PHYSICAL PREREQUISITES. 2 \ 

phasis in delivery, as well as the personal ministry 
that forms the groundwork of his public appeals and 
instruction. He is to be touched daily by the sor- 
rows of his people, and feel for their spiritual wants 
a parent's care; while, in the retirement of the study, 
he is to spare no pains to furnish his mind for the 
important didactic function which is peculiarly his. 
Such a work, bringing into constant exercise the in- 
most elements and faculties of his being, requires a 
physical frame sufficient to endure this enormous 
strain. If men are picked according to physical 
health for the military service of a country, much 
more is such a selection necessary for those who are 
to expose their bodies to a severer trial than that of 
the camp and picket-guard. In the former case, the 
very exposure of their occupation toughens and 
strengthens their bodies, but in the latter every put- 
ting-forth of energy in the line of the occupation is a 
drain upon the physical man, and there is no corre- 
sponding recompense. For a weak-bodied man, there- 
fore, to undertake the onerous duties of the preacher 
seems to me to be a tempting of Providence. Where 
there is organic difficulty of lungs, heart, or nerves, 
the work for God is to be done in some other way 
than in the ministry. We have every reason to be- 
lieve that prophets and apostles and evangelists of 
the Old Testament and the New were men of strong 
physical structure, or, at least, of sound health. We 



22 THE CHRISTIAN PREACHER. 

think of Moses climbing the cliffs of Sinai, Samuel 
hewing Agag in pieces, Jeremiah trudging off to the 
Euphrates and back twice for a single lesson to Ju- 
dah, Elijah traversing the wilderness, the apostles 
journeying into all lands, as men of muscle and sound 
physical organs. Nor is Paul to be considered a whit 
less stalwart than the rest. His weakness of appear- 
ance (which his enemies asserted to exist) may have 
been in his diminutive size, or in some misshapen 
feature of his face ; but surely the man whose life lay 
in journeyings, in perils of waters, in perils of rob- 
bers, in perils in the city, in perils in the wilderness, 
in perils in the sea, in weariness and painfulness, in 
watchings, in hunger and thirst, in fastings, in cold 
and nakedness, in abundant labors, in prisons, with 
eight public scourgings, a stoning and a shipwreck and 
the care of all the Churches, must have been a man 
of iron constitution. Nor is Timothy an exception ; 
the wine for his stomach's sake and often infirmi- 
ties clearly showing that his infirmities were not of a 
very severe character. The settled pastor or preacher, 
even more than the itinerant evangelist (such as most 
of these were), needs this strong physical foundation 
for his life-work. He has not the change of scene 
and necessity of locomotion which may act as a re- 
lief and restorative to the evangelist. Fie consumes 
his vitality as rapidly, and has less resources for its 
renewal. 



INTRODUCTION : PHYSICAL PREREQUISITES. 2 c> 

The frequency with which ministers are laid aside 
from public duties by reason of sickness largely 
arises from a want of regard to this physical qualifi- 
cation of a strong, healthy constitution, without 
which the preacher attempts an impossible work ; the 
only alternative to a breaking-down being a slow and 
easy way of performing ministerial duties, or rather 
seeming to perform them, which no conscientious 
spirit could consent to for a moment. I do not deny 
that every preacher may have and should have his 
time for recreation, but with such time reasonably 
adjusted to his life-scheme, he is nevertheless sub- 
jected to vicissitudes of mental and moral experience 
in his ministry, which absolutely require a body well- 
ordered in health and vigor. 

It is a common fallacy, born of malice and endorsed 
by the unworthiness of a few, that the preacher leads 
an idle life. On the contrary, there is no life so ardu- 
ous as that of the conscientious minister. There are 
certain duties in which others are more severely 
exercised than he. The physician has to suffer fre- 
quent interruption of his hours of sleep, and the 
mechanic has to undergo a weariness of the muscles 
to which a minister is a stranger. But there is no 
calling which so constantly demands so large an at- 
tention of the profounder faculties and, therefore, 
such an incessant strain upon the nervous energies of 
a man, as that which seeks the souls of men and min- 



24 THE CHRISTIAN PREACHER. 

isters to them the deep things of God. The study of 
character and disposition, the dialectic of sin and its 
excuses, the applications of sympathy both for com- 
fort and for rebuke, the discriminations between men 
so as to be all things to all men, the serpent-wisdom 
carried by a dove-harmlessness, the sense of the 
earthen vessel's unfitness ever demanding the faith- 
life instead of the sight-life, the constant readi- 
ness for action in spite of physical and nervous in- 
firmity, the investigations of language, the compari- 
sons of thought, the broad outlook upon life and his- 
tory, the watchfulness over the personal walk as 
furnishing a guiding example, the responsibility for 
immortal souls — these are some of the absorbing 
duties and affections of the Christian preacher, 
which make his life incomparably the most trying to 
the physical man. It may be urged against this 
position that preachers are distinguished for longev- 
ity, and that life-insurance companies act accordingly. 
The answer is twofold : first, that preachers generally 
die very young or very old. A large number of 
preachers fill early graves. They have entered upon 
the laborious life with a slender physical constitution 
and have soon succumbed to its severe conditions. 

The longevity of the ministry, when examined, is 
the longevity of those members of the ministry who 
do not die young. That is, if a minister has physical 
constitution enough to bear the draughts upon it, he 



INTRODUCTION : PHYSICAL PREREQUISITES. 25 

will probably live longer than any one else. The 
second answer has reference to this latter fact, and is 
this, that the consciousness that one is directly and 
officially engaged in the grandest of all works, that 
he is in the whole effort of his life co-operating with 
God in His purposes of grace, and the peaceful con- 
science that accompanies this consciousness, render 
the mind free from those inward conflicts and collis- 
ions, anxieties, and disappointments which do so 
much to shorten human life. In this way, with duties 
most trying to the physical man, the minister can 
maintain and prolong his physical life beyond others. 

It is not an idle life, then, that promotes the 
preacher's longevity. We are, as already said, to 
seek for the causes in the freedom from harassing 
cares and anxieties which a low earthly ambition 
generates, instead of which are the clear conscience 
and the happy knowledge of a high and holy voca- 
tion. 

We have thus far regarded the preacher's physical 
health, simply as a necessary foundation on which to 
build his energetic life, as the proper support to his 
efficiency of force ; but we should not do justice to 
this department of our subject, if we did not notice 
the close connection that often obtains between 
bodily weakness and erroneous doctrine. We do not 
say that a man's liver might cause him to reject the 
atonement, or his neuralgia might make him a Swe- 



2 6 THE CHRISTIAN PREACHER. 

denborgian. We do not attribute to any degree of 
physical disease a destruction of the Biblical system 
of doctrine in the subject of disease, but we are con- 
fident that the coloring of a preacher's teaching is 
largely affected by his morbosity. Gloomy views of 
the Christian life, a false estimate of the relations 
which Christians should sustain toward the moving 
world around them, and ascetic admixture with the 
duties of religion, a lack of practical sympathy with 
the varieties of disposition found in a congregation 
of a thousand souls, and a failure to feel and exhibit 
the just inter-proportions of Scriptural doctrine, are 
natural results of an enfeebled constitution, where 
the wheels of physical life work jarringly and pain- 
fully. 

The preacher can not stand up before his people, 
trusting to a margin of pity and lenient judgment on 
their part. There are too N many profound interests at 
stake. He is the teacher and guide, and can not 
afford to have any excuses for misleading. His fit- 
ness should be such as to render no excuses neces- 
sary. 

The question is not as to who shall testify for 
Christ, for those most afflicted in body can often give 
the clearest and most effective testimony ; but, who 
shall be the official leader in thought, expounding 
the Scriptures, and exhorting the souls of men— 
who shall perform this constant, many-sided duty 



INTRODUCTION : PHYSICAL PREREQUISITES, 2 J 

under all the emergencies of ministerial life. It is 
far more than a witness that is needed. It is one 
whose faculties are all sound and prompt to act, who 
can perceive with comprehensive vision, discriminate 
with acuteness, decide with wisdom, and exhort with 
persuasion ; one who, forgetful of self, is all in his 
subject and his hearers; one who never wearies nor 
worries in his work, but seeks it as water seeks its 
level. 

Can any one deny that bodily health must be the 
physical basis of such a functionary ? While we are 
in the body, we must acknowledge its relation to our 
highest life and activity. However a refined philos- 
ophy may despise it, wisdom can never neglect it. 
The necessities of our composite being must be regard- 
ed, and, however humiliating it may be to our spirit- 
ual man, we must in all our preparations for spiritual 
work recognize the important part which the body is 
called upon to play. 

We have endeavored to show this importance of 
a sound body in the Christian preacher: that it is 
necessary for the comfort and edification of his peo- 
ple, and for his own proper energy and truthfulness, 
but we will not be understood for a moment as mak- 
ing those physical prerequisites of first consequence, 
because we put them naturally first in order of 
thought and mention. We do not forget that the 
preacher's office is a divine one, that it was consti- 



28 THE CHRISTIAN PREACHER. 

tuted by the Lord of the Church, that it is one of 
the special forces by which He preserves, nourishes, 
and exalts His mystic bride, and that its glory is 
altogether a divine and spiritual glory, not to be com- 
prehended or judged by the natural mind. 

Our appeal for healthy ministers is not an appeal 
in behalf of the natural mind, but in behalf of that 
true wisdom which carefully adapts its means to 
their ends, and which, in the offices of the Church of 
Christ, finds a physical as well as a spiritual life to 
deal with, and of which to make a factor in all the 
processes of organized activity. 



MENTAL PREREQUISITES 



LECTURE II. 
MENTAL PREREQUISITES. 

In my introductory lecture I endeavored to define 
the preacher and show that the definition implied 
very marked prerequisites in the man. I further en- 
deavored to set before you the necessity of certain 
physical qualifications in one whose duties were so 
arduous, who was to be so intimately associated with 
every form of life, and who was habitually to address 
large congregations of people for their edification. 

In my present lecture I enter upon the mental 
prerequisites of the preacher. 

II. Mental prerequisites. While it is undoubtedly 

true that the grace of God addresses itself with equal 

power to every class of mind, and it is the glory of 

the Gospel that it is adapted to the appreciation of 

the illiterate as well as to that of the learned, it is 

equally true that the setting forth of God's revealed 

truth in its connections and fullness, and the thorough 

and profound exposition of the Holy Word can be 

made only by the higher classes of mind, capacious 

and powerful to deal with the sublimest ideas, and 

furnished with rich stores of the divine knowledge. 

(3i) 



32 THE CHRISTIAN PREACHER. 

The men whom Christ first chose to carry His truth 
to the world were peasants and fishermen mostly, but 
none the less for that were men of stalwart minds, 
and those put for three years under the grandest 
training ever vouchsafed to man. They were used to 
every form of human character and thought, living 
in constant contact with every type of society, and 
receiving from the fountain-head of truth its constant 
and noblest communications. We are not to slight 
this token, and commit the Church's teachings to 
any one who has a voice. We may seek simplicity in 
the structure and operations of the Church. That 
is in consonance with the Christian scheme. But we 
are not to seek simplicity of brain for the Church's 
ministers, supposing. that weakness of intellect is the 
style of earthen vessel which is to be contrasted with 
the heavenly treasure. That contrast is sufficiently 
maintained when the stoutest intellect is compared 
with the truth divine of the Gospel. We need not 
force a contrast by seeking a lower grade of mind. 

In describing the character of mind that a preacher 
should have, we might be contented with the general 
remark that a strong, well-rounded development of in- 
telligence was necessary, that he should be above the 
ordinary level of men in his grasp of truth and powers 
of analysis, that he should be ready to meet the wants 
and the oppositions of the many with whom he must 
come into contact, and so should prove himself a leader 



MENTAL PREREQUISITES. 33 

of the people. But as these general expressions 
might be variously interpreted by different hearers, a 
more careful and minute enumeration of the preach- 
er's intellectual characteristics may be allowed. Let 
me then mention — 

1. Acuteness of perception. This is the ready and 
sharp use of the mental eye. It involves a rapid glanc- 
ing at all the objects within range of the vision. It 
looks at the one main object of research chiefly, but 
also notes its relation to every other object. It is the 
characteristic of a watchman whose eye sweeps the 
whole horizon, and takes in every tree, bush, and 
rock. The preacher who has his topic to unfold, or 
his Scripture to expound, must know his subject, and 
he can not be said to know his subject till he has 
looked at it in every possible light, and noted its con- 
nections with all other truth. It is very easy for an 
essayist to nurse his theme out of all proportion to 
its related subjects. He has applied his magnifying- 
glass, and all that comes within its field is out of har- 
mony with that which is beyond. If this be done as 
part of a process which takes up successive portions 
of truth in detail, it is all very well, and the mind will 
readily adapt itself to the consecutive examinations. 
But if, as is too often the case, the glass is always 
kept on one spot, the truth is not presented, but ob- 
scured. The great is lost in the little. The whole is 
sacrificed for a part, and a part-truth is frequently a 



34 



THE CHRISTIAN PREACHER. 



falsehood. Some men are always ready to treat of 
any subject on which they have crammed, and such 
speakers are wont to be very decided and dogmatic. 
They feel quite confident in their newly-acquired 
knowledge, and announce it as if it had been born 
with them, when a score of modifying truths, well- 
known to the experience of others, have never crossed 
their brain. The so-called " self-made man " is gen- 
erally of this sort, of whom some wag has said that 
one good thing you can affirm of him, and that is, 
that he worships his Creator. The self-made man, 
having had little learning and less training, mistakes a 
novelty for a profound truth, and builds a philosophy 
on his discovery, when to more educated minds his 
novelty is an exploded theory or a misapprehended 
fact. He vaunts himself before the community and 
has, unfortunately, power to lead other simpletons 
astray, the great public being remarkably incompetent 
to judge of the merits of their teachers. 

Now, when such a man occupies the pulpit and be- 
comes the accredited preacher of a Christian church, 
his capacity for doing harm is immense. He speaks 
with the authority of the Church and with the tacit 
support of his brother ministers, who are afraid to 
correct him, lest they encounter the opposing tide of 
popularity, and receive the opprobrious title of " here- 
sy-hunters/* 

The crude theology which is so often given to the 



MENTAL PREREQUISITES. 35 

people by their preachers is not so much the result of 
a false logic or a perverse heart as of sheer ignorance. 
The great themes of discourse have never been thor- 
oughly pondered. There has been no triangulation 
of the field of thought, no observations from sur- 
rounding heights, no corrections of measure and di- 
rection by the necessary modifying calculations. 

The lack to which we now refer is not so much of 
knowledge as of adjusted knowledge, the emyvcjatg so 
often mentioned, and so hard to translate, in the New 
Testament. The lack may be owing to natural defi- 
ciency, but is as likely to be the result of a slovenly 
habit of mind, confirmed through want of systematic 
training. 

A preacher with this defect is apt to take a text 
without any regard to its context, or the conditions 
under which it was written, and will use it as a motto 
to his preconceived notions. He is readily deceived 
by a word. He regards hell as hell, whether it be 
yeevva or adrjg. He never discriminates between the 
Holy Spirit and the human spirit, between salvation 
in its sense of rescue from sin and death, and salvation 
in its sense of completed redemption. Wherever he 
sees the word " soul " he has only one idea regarding 
it. Everywhere his want of critical acumen confounds 
things that differ, and by his clumsiness he often, in- 
stead of implanting truth, sows the seeds of doubt in 
the minds of discriminating hearers. 



36 THE CHRISTIAN PREACHER. 

We hold that the preacher is the interpreter of 
God's Word, that he has the divine teaching first to 
gather and then to distribute, and that he has no 
other source of instruction than the revelation God 
has made by prophets and apostles, in using which he 
has the guidance of the Holy Spirit through the or- 
dinary faculties of his mind. All other knowledge 
that he may possess is of avail to him as preacher 
only as it is subservient to the illustration of the di- 
vine revelation. In this we take direct issue with those 
who would make the preacher the general instructor 
of his people in philosophy, who could as well take 
his text from the Vendidad or the works of Confucius 
or the dialogues of Plato as from the Bible. If the 
preacher is to hold this relation to his people, for 
Christianity is substituted culture and for the Church 
civilization. It is not what man can develop out of 
himself, it is not what science and philosophy can 
teach, but it is what God has revealed, over and 
above all that man could otherwise know, with which 
the preacher has to deal. The Bible, therefore, is his 
one treasury from which he is ever to draw. 

And here let me withdraw a few moments from the 
direct thread of my argument to speak of that Bible, 
out of which all Christianity has issued, and on which 
all Christianity rests. The Bible is the Old Testa- 
ment, whose perfect truth and complete inspiration is 
attested by our Lord himself and His apostles, and 



MENTAL PREREQUISITES. 37 

the New Testament, for whose equal truth and in- 
spiration the Saviour promised the Holy Spirit, as the 
Helper, who should teach His apostles all things and 
bring all things to their remembrance, the Spirit of 
truth, who should especially testify of Christ. 

With regard to the Old Testament, if there had 
been any falsehood or error in it, we may be sure that 
our Saviour would have pointed it out, as He did 
point out the errors of the traditions, and in accord- 
ance with that principle enunciated by our Lord 
when He said to His disciples regarding another im- 
portant subject, " If it were not so, I would have told 
you." If the Jewish priesthood had been a late in- 
vention of the royal period, with a post-exilian ap- 
pendix, if the Psalms had been mere hap-hazard 
poetry of excited and unreasonable (not to say wicked) 
minds, if the ancient story of the historical books had 
been a clumsy concatenation of local and tribal 
myths, if the prophets had written their predictions 
after the events, how could He, whose name was 
Truth, have constantly and emphatically held up this 
book as the infallible guide of man, putting its evi- 
dence before that of any miracle, without ever suggest- 
ing any exception to be taken against the holy and 
revered volume ? The modern attacks upon the Old 
Testament are but masked attacks upon our Lord 
himself. By destroying the genuineness, authenticity, 
and inspiration of the Old Testament, they both 



3 8 THE CHRISTIAN PRE A CHER. 

make Jesus a liar and cut off from Him all the Messi- 
anic testimonies. They thus gain their end, which is 
to eliminate all that is supernatural from religion, and 
annul all the distinctive features of Christianity. 
The great inner facts of sacrifice and atonement, out 
of which only can grow the true Christian life, are 
annihilated, and Christ is left as simply a good man 
giving some excellent advice along with some narrow 
Jewish errors. 

It is for the Christian to stand with his Saviour by 
the sacred oracles, and to' recognize in the first lisp- 
ings of the new criticism the Judas assault upon the 
Son of God. 

With regard to the New Testament, the inner evi- 
dence, as well as the testimony of the Church, far out- 
weighs all that the ingenious trifling of great minds 
has brought to bear against its divine character and 
its integral preservation. A mighty chasm separates 
it from the works of the Ante-Nicene fathers who 
chronologically followed immediately. The New 
Testament stands out as a mount of God, with noth- 
ing like it on either side in the centuries immediately 
preceding or the centuries succeeding. It fits in at 
every jut and indenture with the Old Testament, and 
yet in no mechanical and artificial way. It is the 
adaptedness of a perfect growth. Now it is the Old 
and New Testaments, this Bible of God, which is to 
be the material for the preacher's use. And because 



MENTAL PREREQUISITES. 39 

it is God's, and no other book is God's, nor are man's 
excogitations God's, the preacher is not to allow any- 
human authority to mingle itself with the divine, as 
such human authority is found in philosophy or 
poetry or the inferences of science. 

The acuteness or penetration which should be 
characteristic of a Christian preacher is, therefore, 
primarily to be exercised with regard to the Word of 
God. It is not that he should be familiar with that 
word, but that, being familiar with it, he should have 
a discerning eye to understand its correlated teach- 
ings. He should be able at once to measure figure, 
parable, prophecy, history, precept, as in turn they 
come before his view, to bring into right relation the 
chronological and circumstantial conditions of the 
different parts, to weigh the language (which has a 
varying standard) according to the stand-point of the 
speaker or writer, and yet to recognize in all the im- 
manent power of the Spirit of God. 

Divine truth lies in the Scriptures as gold in a 
mine. It has to be sought with care. He who takes 
but the superficial meaning may get a nugget or may 
get a grasp of ore only. The searching of the Script- 
ures implies careful and studious handling. Even 
the illiterate must ponder and meditate upon the 
Word. Much more must he, who is to feed the 
church as pastor, be a thorough explorer of the 
broad field, that he may gather for the flock what 



4Q 



THE CHRISTIAN PREACHER. 



God has sown over so wide a surface. Whatever 
the metaphor we use, whether it be that of a mine 
or a large land of nourishing growth, persevering 
energy in research is the duty of him who would 
spread divine things before the human mind and 
heart. He is like a Joseph placed over a great em- 
pire, and needs a clear eye, a thorough system, a har- 
monizing power to supply the granaries whence the 
people draw their life. 

That the preacher should be acquainted with the 
Greek and Hebrew languages " goes without saying." 
In those languages God saw fit to give His truth to 
man, and to those languages we must go for all 
authoritative decisions of disputed questions. No 
translation can exactly represent the original. All 
translations are sufficiently true to lead the soul to 
Christ, and to nourish it in the new life, but we need 
more than this. There is an edifying of the soul both 
quantitatively and qualitatively, which is proportion- 
ed to its faithful search into the mind of God. This 
is only done by Biblical exploration. Nice distinc- 
tions, minute connections, intricate sequences, all 
having direct spiritual application, are to be discov- 
ered by this exploration, and a knowledge of the 
Greek and Hebrew is an absolute necessity to this, 
either for the individual Christian or his proxy, the 
preacher. The blunders of a ministry uninstructed 
in the Word of God, are not only ludicrous, but 



MENTAL PREREQUISITES. 4 ! 

harmful to the Church. A Church that does not grow 
symmetrically by the Word of God, will grow de- 
formedly by false teaching. The preacher can be 
preserved from blunders only by a personal examina- 
tion of the divine record, and the examination must 
be that of a sacred scientist. No natural science de- 
mands more careful and acute analysis and a more 
thorough and extensive induction. It is only by this 
scientific use of the Word of God that the Church is 
to be preserved from the errors of narrow-minded, 
prejudiced, or fanatical leaders. 

But while the acuteness of perception of the 
preacher is to be exercised chiefly upon the written 
revelation of God, it is not to end there. Every sub- 
ject of importance to the Christian life is undoubtedly 
presented in the Bible, but these subjects have ana- 
logues in the social and political life of men, by which 
they may be illustrated. A preacher should have his 
eye traversing the course of history and the great 
facts of human society, so as to illustrate and confirm 
his expositions of the Word. He should be quick to 
discern the various institutions of man, and to trace 
the actions of human nature in their manifold forms. 
By such a panoramic view of life he has ready not 
only the illustrations of Scripture teaching, but also 
its proper adaptations. He sees where rightly to 
apply the truth that he has gathered from the Word. 
He knows what portion of truth is specially appropri- 



42 



THE CHRISTIAN PREACHER. 



ate for any special occasion, and will not deal in bar- 
ren generalities or irrelevant discourse. Furthermore, 
this acuteness of the preacher will readily detect the 
fallacies of infidelity, whether in the premises of phi- 
losophical statement or in the conclusions from sci- 
entific induction, and be able, without any supposed 
need of mastering the details of any special science, 
to render its attacks innocuous. 

We have now, in this one trait of mind, described 
a man of no ordinary style, the man of acute vision 
over a broad field, able to select and combine his 
material for the most effective use. Most men are 
narrow-minded. They think in a groove. Their opin- 
ions are prejudices. If such men are ministers, they 
seek a text to support their views, not to enlighten 
their minds. We have attempted to describe a man 
of totally different stamp, one who searches for truth 
and then delivers it to his people ; one who is a con- 
stant and indefatigable explorer in the realm of reve- 
lation, ever continuing and never finishing his discov- 
eries ; not changing and abandoning the old, but ever 
adding the new to the old, knowing that truth is lim- 
itless. We have also described a man who finds his 
treasure-house of instruction in the Bible as the Book 
of God. In this regard he differs from those who 
give merely moral or sentimental lectures on current 
events ; who discuss economical or political questions ; 
who pronounce eulogies on deceased or living states- 



MENTAL PREREQUISITES. 43 

men ; or who rhetorically elaborate picturesque 
themes. All these performances are good in their 
place. They are both entertaining and useful. They 
help society and tend to refinement. But they are 
totally apart from the distinctive work of the Gospel 
preacher. The wonderful revelation of God's grace 
in Christ is neither so limited nor so light as to need 
a supplement of secular topics and human philosophy 
in order that the preacher may eke out his functional 
duties from his pulpit. On the contrary, the field of 
revealed truth is so vast, and its importance so sur- 
passing, that a thousand lifetimes could not exhaust 
its varied presentation. And, moreover, there is no 
other truth that satisfies the cravings of the soul. 
Other truth may interest, amuse, refine, educate, but 
this Bible truth alone supplies the needy heart and 
brings strength to the weary spirit. It is God's own 
living touch to the soul. We are led to emphasize 
this dependence of the preacher upon the Word of 
God, because the pulpit is in danger of losing this its 
vital principle under the strong pressure of the worldly 
elements of society that have penetrated the Church. 
A congregation is too often guided by its young and 
worldly members ; and at their demand a young and 
popular preacher is sought rather than an experi- 
enced pastor, mighty in the Scriptures. The out- 
ward adornments of the orator are counted at the 
highest value, and clever satire, like that of the Mid- 



44 THE CHRISTIAN PREACHER. 

die and New Comedy of the Greeks, elicits the ap- 
plause of the pews. People flock to the church where 
so attractive a rhetorician or actor preaches, and re- 
tire from the service with sentiments and conversa- 
tion akin to those with which one leaves a concert or a 
play. Other churches now seek to equal this so-called 
success. Young ministers see that large salaries are 
offered to performers, rather than to preachers, and 
begin to train themselves to be performers also. The 
Church and ministry thus reduce themselves to the 
level of the stage, and form a close association with 
the irreligious press, which now begins to be the 
counselor and guide of the Church of Christ. 

The whole of this lamentable degradation of the 
pulpit begins with departure from the Word of God — 
a transmutation of the preacher from the proclaimer 
of the Divine Oracles to the caterer to public taste. 
When this cardinal error is committed, there is no 
limit to the folly and sin that may ensue. And when 
the degradation is begun by departure from the Word 
of God, Satan prepares an easy, down-hill road through 
the love of approbation and pecuniary reward. This 
is an age when attacks upon the inspiration of God's 
Word are multiplied, and it becomes the Church to 
be watchful against the first breaches in its walls. We 
should have and use a Pauline spirit to cut off at once 
any one who would prostitute the pulpit to low and 
carnal ends, and who would thus practically adopt the 



MENTAL PREREQUISITES. 45 

enemy's slights upon God's Word. It is a false liber- 
ality that would admit the foes of truth into our cita- 
del, and so give up all that is distinctive and divine 
in our faith. If men wish to make light of God's 
Scriptures and to exalt " modern thought " as against 
them, let them do it outside of the Church, where 
such work has its appropriate place ; but never let the 
Church, through its official courts and authorities, 
consent to foster a belittling of that written Word, 
on the full inspiration of which depends the Church's 
purity and power, if not its very existence. 

2. The next characteristic of a preacher that .we 
would specially mark is a sound judgment. His acute, 
penetrating, far-reaching mind, occupied principally 
with the Word, but nevertheless accustomed to a 
panoramic view of men and things, must suit its 
communications to the characters and necessities of 
the occasion. The preacher meets sorrows and joys, 
adversity and prosperity in the community to which 
he ministers. He finds prejudice at work, arising 
from envy or an unwise zeal. He has before him 
wealth, that blinds the moral sense and covers ir- 
regularities of conduct, or the pride of learning that 
sees error in definitions rather than in life, or fri- 
volity that would laugh away the power of the truth, 
or religious ardor that uses questionable methods of 
operation, or apathy that is most moral and self- 
satisfied. Before these various forms of mind he is 



46 THE CHRISTIAN PREACHER. 

to present the same Gospel in its varied application. 
Unchanging in his doctrine, he is, nevertheless, to 
assume the apostolic position of being all things to 
all men. For this, he must enter into their situation, 
as well as understand his own. He must sympathize 
with them in their temptations, that he may rightly 
choose his argument and counsel. The examples, 
the precepts, the promises, the threatenings of the 
Word are adapted to every form of human experi- 
ence, and the wise master of assemblies fastens his 
nails in the right places. Tracts on dancing are not 
to be given to cripples. A process of selection should 
precede every ministration of the Word. Nor should 
the preacher content himself with generalities, as suf- 
ficiently appropriate for all at all times. The Bible 
is particular as well as general. It says, " Thou art 
the man." Moreover, souls are waiting to be spe- 
cially instructed. They are seeking for light on a 
critical portion of their path, and by them it should 
be said, " A word spoken in due season, how good is 
it!" 

In order to accomplish the end here designated, the 
preacher must have a healthy judgment. Out of an 
abundant knowledge he must, with his quick pene- 
tration, compare, select, and combine for the occasion 
with an impartial mind. A hobby is utterly destruc- 
tive of the preacher's power for good. It is soon 
detected as a hobby, and so reveals a biased, one- 



MENTAL PREREQUISITES. 47 

sided mind unfit to be the guide and teacher of 
others. The very truth, if truth it be, that is so 
dwelt on to the exclusion of all else, is made distaste- 
ful to the hearer, and thus the very opposite effect is 
produced from that intended by the preacher. The 
preacher who is a hobby-rider is on the same level 
as the physician who prescribes one medicine for all 
diseases. He soon earns the reputation of a quack, 
and is regarded only by eccentric and weak minds. 
The good physician discriminates between diseases, 
and from his abundant pharmacopoeia prescribes ac- 
cording to the symptoms, while the quack, quite set- 
tled in his a priori opinion that his remedy is a 
panacea, cares not to examine the patient or to form 
any diagnosis. 

It is true that there are some fundamental doc- 
trines that lie at the basis of all Christian faith and 
life, and these can not be too strongly insisted on ; 
but it may be as truly said, that if even these are 
perpetually presented without the varied efflorescence 
of doctrine that belong to them, the result is a dead- 
ening rather than a quickening of the thought and 
feeling. The endless variety of the Bible should 
preserve a preacher from such an error, and yet it is 
said that there are preachers who can not find suffi- 
cient subjects of discourse in the Bible, and who by 
reason of this famine in the Holy Land go down into 
the political or social Egypt to find themes. 



48 THE CHRISTIAN PREACHER, 

The preacher's work from the pulpit ought to be a 
synthesis and enforcing of his work in the homes of 
his people. If he be a pastor (and not an evangelist) 
the experiences with which he meets from house to 
house will fill him to running over with material for 
counsel and instruction from the Scriptures. Every 
text will have a new force and give him a new in- 
spiration. A preacher who does not visit his people, 
not only draws a bow at a venture when he preaches, 
but also suffers from a destitution of scriptural and 
spiritual ideas, which tempts him to a literary miscel- 
lany ; or, if he have not literary originality, suggests 
to him the use of the sermons of others, as equally 
good for his congregation with any of his own, which 
is probably the case, though it does not mend the 
evil of the matter. What a congregation needs is 
not merely good thoughts, but good thoughts welling 
up fresh from a living soul — not merely Bible truths, 
but Bible truths held forth by a warm and earnest 
experience ; and, therefore, a fresh and warm sermon 
spoken from a good man's heart, though it be in- 
ferior in style and argument, is far more adapted to 
the edification of an audience than the most finished 
and perfect discourse of another who may be a mas- 
ter in sermonizing. Why do we have sermons at all ? 
Why is there any preaching? Why are we not sat- 
isfied with the reading of God's Word ? Is it not be- 
cause we need a personal contact of soul with soul, 



MENTAL PREREQUISITES. 49 

which the Word by itself can not furnish ? So that 
(with reverence be it said) even the Sermon on the 
Mount can not take the place of human discourse in 
the ministrations of a preacher in the Church of 
Christ. It is this fact and principle which makes the 
use of others' sermons an evil in the pulpit, apart 
from the practical falsehood of the action where the 
preacher does not announce his indebtedness. 

In order, then, that a preacher may be able to ex- 
ercise a wise judgment in preparing for his people, he 
must know them personally and well, and so be guid- 
ed in selection of Scripture and in course of thought. 
The sense, on the part of the people, of the preach- 
er's sympathy will be a powerful agent of impression 
and conviction, and will be apt to prevent their occu- 
pation of the critic's unbecoming position. 

This sound judgment, for which we are now con- 
tending, is the same as that which we call tact, if we 
only ally it with a severe conscientiousness and high 
religious duty. Men of tact are not plenty. Whether 
it be laziness or a native and irremediable defect, a 
very large number of our fellow-men are clumsy in 
their attempted adaptations. They may be men of 
very acute and analytic thought, prodigies of learning 
and quick in the detection of error in any particular 
field of research, and yet when they have to deal 
with men, and are called upon to use their gifts for 
some objective good, they are stupid and bungling. 
3 



50 THE CHRISTIAN PREACHER. 

Now, a preacher has conspicuously to deal with men. 
His daily work is with men, and with men of all sorts. 
He should understand human nature in all its Protean 
phases. It should be a second nature for him to 
adapt himself to every one in the fitting way. 

Now, in this important qualification ministers are 
proverbially deficient. The defect may be, and doubt- 
less is, exaggerated by malevolence, but that there is 
solid ground for criticism can not be denied. One rea- 
son, and perhaps the main reason, for this ministerial 
verdancy (if I may use such a word), is the ordinary 
style of our Seminary training. It is a cloister life. 
The student is secluded, cut off from the busy haunts 
of men, and often even from the smaller circles of 
social life ; and while he is storing his mind with 
knowledge that can be derived from books, he is 
gaining no knowledge whatever of the practical life 
of men with which he will have to deal ; but, on the 
contrary, he is forming habits that will render it the 
more difficult (sometimes even to impossibility) for 
him ever to become practically acquainted with act- 
ual life. 

The ordinary minister comes out of the Seminary 
an imbecile. He may be a good scholar, an able 
reasoner, a devoted servant of God, but his place is 
still in the Seminary, not in the seething cauldron 
of the world. He is utterly dazed by the great reali- 
ties around him. He has not had an atom of prepa- 



MENTAL PREREQUISITES. g x 

ration for this. He shows such a weakness in meeting 
the dashing emergencies of life that the world loses 
respect for him. How many ministers will tell you 
that they spent the first ten years of their ministry in 
trying to overcome this awkwardness. There are 
some, however, who continue to live this green and 
ineffective life to the end, and the only pleasant feat- 
ure in the matter is that they are happily unconscious 
of their own defect. It is a good sign for the future, 
that some of our seminaries are seeing the impor- 
tance of throwing the young men into active service, 
while engaged in their studies, and of systematizing 
visitation, exhortation, and philanthropic supply as 
parts of the Seminary course. This will do much 
toward removing the present reproach. I sometimes 
think that it would be well for a student not to enter 
the Seminary till he is thirty years old, having during 
the preceding years become acquainted with the 
various styles and modes of men. He would then 
begin his Seminary course with a clear and accurate 
idea of its aim, and when he should leave, he would 
know how to use all his powers with skill and exact- 
ness. 

It is because young men are so ill-adapted to the 
true work of the preacher that they are tempted to 
substitute a. false work — a mere capture of itching 
ears, and so lay themselves out on eloquence, or 
poetry, or eccentricity, as passports to popular favor. 



52 



THE CHRISTIAN PREACHER. 



There is no surer way to make the ministry a trade 
than to send forth ministers destitute of sound judg- 
ment or tact. They are led not to look to the wants 
of the people, but to the mere perfunctory perform- 
ance of public duties, which they may strive to make 
attractive as possible on trade account. Even where 
the want of tact is counterbalanced by a sincere piety 
and so checked from seeking secular ends, there can 
be little or no edification, for edification implies a 
skilled and judicious workman laying his courses by 
square and plummet with all fitness and exactness. 
The hap-hazard tumbler-together of material may 
heap up, but scarcely edify. 

The preacher who lacks sound judgment can not 
gauge the amount of secular material that is neces- 
sary for the illustration or application of his Script- 
ure, but will either, by using too little, make a bald, 
abstract discourse without any adhering qualities, or 
will, by using too much, wander away from his divine 
message and become a mere secular orator. 

We can not sweepingly say that politics (for ex- 
ample) are not to be brought into the pulpit. Such 
wholesale assertions on one side lead to equally 
wholesale assertions on the other. The truth lies 
between the two, that politics or any other secular 
subject has a full right to enter the pulpit, whenever 
it can be made strictly subservient to the Bible truth 
discussed or expounded. A preacher may illustrate 



MENTAL PREREQUISITES. 53 

his subject by a figure drawn from the planting of 
seeds and their watering, but a discourse on kitchen 
gardening would be wholly unbecoming, however 
useful and entertaining it might be made. A preacher 
may apply some important Bible principle to our use 
of money in business life, but a treatise on tariffs or 
any other question of finance or political economy is 
not a sermon. A sound judgment will enable the 
preacher rightly to mingle the secular and biblical 
elements of his discourse, keeping ever in mind that 
he stands before the people, not to give forth his own 
philosophy, but to communicate the revealed Word 
of God. 

3. The acuteness of perception and the sound 
judgment, which we have now insisted upon as nec- 
essary for the Christian preacher, almost implies in- 
dustrial mental habits. And yet, in strict analysis, 
this persistent Industry forms a separate item in the 
qualifications we have to enumerate. If Hippocrates 
could say, " Art is long and Life is short " in the in- 
troduction to his work as an encouragement to ener- 
getic action in scientific study, we may use the same 
style of argument, mutatis mutandis, for an incentive 
to the Christian preacher in his high office of ex- 
pounding the will of God. Revelation is very long 
and very broad and very deep, and Life is very short. 
There is no time to waste. The man who does not 
see Revelation and Human Life in this proportionate 



5 4 THE CHRIS TIA N PRE A CHER. 

relation is unfit to be a minister of Jesus Christ. The 
man who thinks the circle of biblical knowledge is 
soon run is too ignorant to lead others. The soterial 
pith of the Gospel is simple and soon exhibited. It 
is all contained in one sentence : " God so loved the 
world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that 
whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but 
have everlasting life/' The great saving truth may 
flash upon the needy soul and give it new life. Blessed 
be God there is life in a look at the Crucified. But 
the oecodomic complement of the Gospel has no such 
narrow bounds. It swells out to a limitless extent. 
As the capacity for growth develops in the renewed 
heart, the materials for growth are presented in God's 
revelation, the Christ-stature being the only proper 
aim of the Christian. We do not know the rationale 
of growth in the higher world, we can not tell the 
character of the change in knowledge that will be 
ours on entering the life beyond the body, but we 
may gather from the teachings of the Word that, the 
moral quality being the same in all the glorified, the 
moral quantity will follow the proportions of attain- 
ment here. Nothing is clearer than the fact that 
this life is the basis of the final adjudication, and 
that, therefore, any slighting of this life as a mere 
moment of the eternity, with the notion that the 
great future must make all even, is contrary to the 
constant and consistent teaching of Scripture. This 



MENTAL PREREQUISITES. 55 

life is the basis of the future life, not only in the dis- 
tinctions between saint and sinner, but between saint 
and saint. The parables of the talents and of the 
pounds, as illustrating the principle " to him that 
hath shall be given," evidently as between this world 
and the world to come, are in harmony with many 
didactic statements of the Word to the same effect. 

This being so, a building up of the soul here in the 
truth is in the highest sense a building for eternity. 

No preacher can take this view of Christian edifica- 
tion without having impressed upon his mind the 
necessity of untiring industry on his part as, under 
God, an Edifier of the Church. As the Church is to 
grow through his growing, he can not be too diligent 
in adding to his faith knowledge. He has a troop 
behind him, and their march depends upon his. 

He should never picture for himself a life of ease. 
He should never say, " How can I get most vacation 
and least work ? " which is the appropriate question 
of a heartless hireling ; but he should say from the 
depths of affection for his work, " How can I take 
the least vacation consistent with physical health?" 
The phrases "a comfortable living" and "a fat pas- 
torate" are brought to the front all too often in the 
minds of Christian ministers, and ecclesiastical sine- 
cures are a travesty of holy things. Does a Hum- 
boldt or a Le Verrier in his scientific course seek to 
gain long vacations, and shall Christ's preachers show 



56 THE CHRISTIAN PRE A CHER. 

less enthusiasm for their heavenly science than these 
explorers of physical nature ? 

The eager use of as much time as he can get for 
his holy work should mark the Christian preacher, a 
work whose very variety will check the inroads of fa- 
tigue, and afford in itself the elements of the truest 
recreation. For a preacher to get the reputation of 
an idler is to prejudice the holy vocation through his 
apparent insincerity. He can not himself have a pro- 
found sense of the human need of the Gospel, or, on 
the other hand, of the mighty power of the Gospel, 
if he is listless in the use of his office or degrades it 
to a perfunctory ritual. Apart, too, from this view 
of the necessity of ministerial industry, is the argu- 
ment of dignified example to men in all vocations 
that a preacher should exhibit. If he occupy the 
place in the regard of the community which his work 
and office bespeak for him, he will be naturally quoted 
as an example in all the moral characteristics of his 
life. An idle minister will promote idleness in his 
parish, and a busy minister will promote industry 
among his people. 

But we are now looking at this quality of Industry 
rather from an intellectual than a moral stand-point. 
We are insisting that the preacher's mind should be 
ever busy, searching, comparing, judging, combining, 
formulating, illustrating in that truth which has reve- 
lation as its basis, and for its aim the sanctification of 



MENTAL PREREQUISITES. 57 

mankind. Of course, this industry is to be the result 
of the highest enthusiasm for the work, the most 
thorough consecration to the Saviour himself; but 
of this we shall speak at another time. We have 
now only the quality itself to note, as one of the 
habits of mind, without which no man should ever 
enter the pulpit and be saluted as a guide in the 
Church of Christ. 

Closely allied with industry should be system, that 
methodical use of the intellect by which the most 
ground can be covered, and the most satisfactory 
work achieved. It is the help-meet to Industry, giv- 
ing to it a force and character, where otherwise there 
might be the ragged form of waste and failure. It 
is the scientific principle, which every true worker 
should recognize in his practice, and with which he 
may have the exquisite happiness of feeling his effect- 
ive strength. 

Without system he will repeat himself; will degen- 
erate into rhapsody or commonplace ; will present 
(as well as hold) confused notions ; will sparkle rather 
than shine ; will excite rather than warm. 

A favorite fallacy with some is to trust to 
what they call genius, which is simply a practical 
defiance to the invariable laws of mind. The so- 
called " genius" is a master of some smart trick by 
which wonder is excited. He is a pulpit Paganini, 
playing on one string, and counting the approbation 



58 



THE CHRISTIAN PREACHER. 



of his audience as a proof of the classic excellence of 
his music. The "genius" never has to prepare his 
sermons. He inbreathes them from Nature during 
the week, and outbreathes them on Sunday without 
effort. He believes that industry and system were 
meant only for dull and heavy minds, and that men- 
tal superiority is shown by mental carelessness. The 
"genius" considers eccentricity to be power and a 
concourse to be success. He knows by natural ab- 
sorption, where others have to study, and he scorns 
method as a bird would scorn a ladder. 

We hold, with all due deference to these gifted 
men, that nothing is of much value that is not ob- 
tained by labor, that God has established the law of 
mental labor in man as against instinct in the brute 
creation, that hence knowledge is proportioned to in- 
dustry, and that, outside of inspiration, an unstudied 
knowledge is both shallow and erroneous. 

It is the laborious thinker who is rewarded with 
great discoveries of truth — truth that may have been 
often discovered by others, but is none the less a new 
discovery to each profound explorer. The gain of a 
grand truth from God's revelation in this way gives a 
new strength to the preacher in his whole work as the 
conductor or communicator of truth to others; for the 
interweavings and natural support of all truth regard- 
ing God's grace to man are so universal that light on 
one affects the whole circle. It is this fact which 



MENTAL PREREQUISITES. 59 

makes a " system of theology " a most natural and 
rational product of Bible study, against which some 
love to inveigh with much talk of "bigotry" and 
" Procrustean beds." 

Contradictions are no more possible in revelation 
than in nature, and to assert the contrary is merely to 
aim a covert blow at revelation itself. And if there 
are no contradictions in revelation, and all revelation 
has human sanctification as its object, a connected 
scheme of the whole becomes a necessity to its true 
understanding. A theology without a system con- 
tains in this its own condemnation. It is a house di- 
vided against itself, and can not stand. Our fathers 
in framing symbols, creeds, or confessions, were not 
departing from, but conforming to, the leadings of 
God as made known both in His Word and in the 
structure of the human mind. 

The revolutionary spirit in the churches that in- 
dulges in flings at such systematic teaching is gener- 
ally found connected with a withdrawal from the su- 
pernatural, and a desire to merge distinctive Christian- 
ity in natural religion. It is not so much an attack 
upon system, as it is upon system in revelation. The 
assailants admit system in science and in philosophy, 
nay, earnestly contend for this as a necessity, but rev- 
elation only must be unconnected and unconnectable. 
You will almost always find the sneer at creeds coup- 
led with a great exaltation of humanity and confi- 



60 THE CHRISTIAN PREACHER. 

dence in the native instincts of the race. So that I 
believe I am safe in saying that at the bottom of 
every assault upon systematic theology is a repug- 
nance to the written Word of God. 

The supernatural and the natural are alike addressed 
to man as a rational creature, and the processes of his 
mind toward each should be the same. There is a 
science of God's dealings with our fallen race, as 
there is a science of His dealings with our bodies, 
and a true theology will be subject to the same sub- 
jective methods as a true physiology. 

It is because theology is a science of vast propor- 
tions, and because the preacher must be a theologian, 
that we lay down our proposition that a true preacher 
must be a man of severe and systematic mental 
industry. 



GENERAL KNOWLEDGE. 
ARGUMENTATIVE POWER, 



LECTURE III. 

My last lecture was devoted to a survey of the 
mental prerequisites of a Christian preacher, and in 
it I endeavored to show that he must be a man above 
his fellows in acuteness of the mental eye, in sound 
judgment or tact, and in a systematic industry. 
There are two further qualifications which I would 
add in this series ; the first is, the possession of Gen- 
eral Knowledge. 

An unlearned or illiterate ministry is already ex- 
cluded by our former positions, for no one possessing 
an acute and industrious mind could be unlearned or 
illiterate. We are not, therefore, arguing against an 
illiterate ministry under this head of general knowl- 
edge, but are demanding of an educated ministry 
that they maintain an interest in the general advance 
of human knowledge, so far as to appreciate state- 
ments and arguments in any of its branches, and to 
converse understandingly and effectively regarding 
any. In other words, we contend for a college-bred 
ministry as against those preachers who have dodged 
the college in their haste to enter the pulpit, and to 
whom indulgent councils or presbyteries have given 

a dispensation as regards general knowledge. We 

(63) 



64 THE CHRISTIAN PREACHER. 

do not say that there may not be positions of official 
usefulness in the Church for the under- educated, 
positions even of instruction and exhortation, but 
we hold that these should be in some way subordi- 
nate to the position of the authorized expounder of 
Scripture and its theology. The heads of authori- 
tative statement should be the peers of the learned, 
but the mistakes and deficiencies of the inferior 
teachers may be allowed without serious loss. 

The preacher will have little influence in inculcat- 
ing religious truth, if he is known as a blunderer in 
the elements of science. Such men can only min- 
ister successfully in holy things to those who are as 
ignorant as themselves. It is the same with the 
preacher as with the Bible itself. If the Bible teaches 
false science and false philosophy, it can not be 
trusted for a right theology. The Satanism that is 
ever seeking to hold up the science of the Bible as 
primitive, and therefore barbarous, with the apolo- 
getic formula that the Bible is not given to teach us 
science, knows this well. It well knows that if the 
Bible is made to be a book of scientific blunders, it 
will no longer be a book of religious authority. Any 
doctrine of inspiration that is of positive value is 
utterly gone on such a hypothesis. It is here where 
infidelity is concentrating her forces and making her 
deadliest attack on the Church of Christ. The re- 
ligious teacher who is ignorant of the great principles 



GENERAL KNOWLEDGE, 65 

of science or the facts of general knowledge in his- 
tory, geography, and literature, will suffer this same 
collapse of authority. He can no more be a leader, 
and men will listen to him, not to receive his instruc- 
tions, but to criticise his errors. 

Without this general knowledge, he is, moreover, 
unable to illustrate truth pointedly and entertain- 
ingly. The metaphor, simile, and analogy which play 
so important a part in all public speaking to the gen- 
eral mind, should be drawn from a copious reservoir 
containing a large variety, and to this end the 
preacher should have his mind well informed in the 
various departments of knowledge which are repre- 
sented in the members of his congregation, as well as 
in those which are unknown to them, and yet might 
furnish apt elucidations of important truth. The 
homely illustrations drawn from the trades and occu- 
pations of men, as well as the illustrations from the 
discoveries of physical science, are equally potent to 
arrest the attention and to secure the memory. The 
study of nature is a fruitful source of this power, and 
every preacher should be a close observer of animate 
and inanimate life. The greater the variety that is 
ready at the subject's call, the more interesting will 
be the presentation of the more recondite truth. 
Men are taught best, as children are, by object les- 
sons, and if the object may not be actually seen, it 
can be described. A sermon of mere abstractions 



66 THE CHRISTIAN PREACHER. 

may do for the trained thinker, but as the vast ma- 
jority of men are not trained thinkers, it is most im- 
portant to reduce the abstract as far as possible to 
the concrete. 

When I speak of the preacher being a student of 
nature, I do not mean that he is to be the interpreter 
of nature to his people, or that he is to become a 
teacher of natural history, nor do I mean that he is 
to draw his subjects from nature; I mean that he is 
to confine his use of his naturalist's knowledge to the 
apt and easy illustration of truths, which, in the first 
instance, he takes directly and only from the Holy 
Scriptures. Poets may find sermons in stones and 
books in running brooks, but the preacher has a far 
higher and holier field in which to find his discourses. 
It is often said of this or that preacher that he gets 
his sermons from the fields and streams. Alas ! for the 
people that are fed on such a diet ! If the book of 
Nature were sufficient for man's wants, the book of 
Revelation would not have been written. If mount- 
ains and trees could enlighten dark souls with the 
rays of salvation, prophets and apostles were super- 
fluous. Let us keep Chimborazo and the sycamore 
in their appropriate place. A religion that knows no 
sin and no Saviour may find all its nutritive aliment 
in physical nature ; but a religion that ministers to 
minds and hearts diseased must have an articulate 
voice from God — must reveal and not suggest, must 



GENERAL KNO W LEDGE, fy 

convert and not gratify. The religion of Nature as 
found among men is a sentiment and not a force, a 
poetry and not a truth. It goes not as deep as sin, 
it reaches not as high as heaven. It occupies the 
sesthetic zone of feeling and experience, and leaves 
the soul where it found it, in the entanglements of 
moral evil. 

The preacher is to beware of this anti-gospel, and 
to make his familiarity with Nature's manifold ways 
and wonders simply a servant and adjuvant to his 
expositions of the written Word. If he so use this 
varied knowledge, he will find remarkable analogies 
between the kingdoms of nature and grace, and will 
follow our Lord's own method of enforcing the 
highest truth by their use. 

This general knowledge is by no means to be the 
searching and minute knowledge of the specialist. 
Life is too short for such exploits on the part of the 
preacher. One can take a bird's-eye view of a science, 
understand its main lines of investigation, note the 
extent of its discoveries, and be able to appreciate its 
importance and judge of its comparative value with- 
out being a scientist. So can one have a general view 
of comparative history and be able to follow any 
treatise that discusses any of its branches philo- 
sophically, while yet wholly unable to be a historian 
in the lecture-room. It is a possible and enviable 
power that collects the results of human thought and 



68 THE CHRISTIAN PREACHER, 

investigation and stores it all in proper order in the 
mind for effective use ; and this power is wholly apart 
from the scientist's close, consecutive, and micro- 
scopic analysis of his specialty. This general knowl- 
edge enables the possessor to be a correct and com- 
petent judge in the reasonings of scientific men, 
while he may be utterly ignorant of the merits of 
the discoveries themselves. The moment the scien- 
tist enters the syllogistic field, he is only on an 
equality with the unscientific thinker. In his inves- 
tigations and classifications the unscientific thinker 
can not follow him, but the moment a result is pro- 
claimed, it is common property, and the scientist has 
no special claim to its management in argument. 
This thought should keep all young students for the 
ministry from the false idea of mastering geology, 
astronomy, and physiology, in order to answer the 
objections to revelation from those sources. With 
all the laborious details of those sciences the contro- 
versy has nothing to do, but only with their accred- 
ited results, and these can be readily summed up and 
used by the theologian. I have known young men 
to waste their time and imperil their stability by go- 
ing abroad to study science in Germany as prepara- 
tory to the work of the Gospel ministry. They 
turned from Nineveh to Tarshish, and brought up 
at last -in the darkness of the whale's belly. 

The general knowledge, for which we contend, is 



ARGUMENTA TIVE PO WER. g g 

to be obtained first and principally by a regular col- 
lege education with the old curriculum of classics, 
mathematics, science, and philosophy ; and, secondly, 
by a systematic course of judicious reading on the 
part of the preacher, by which he keeps fully abreast 
of the age. The daily newspaper is a necessary part 
of this training, not simply as furnishing the facts of 
the day, but also as showing the influence and im- 
pression of those facts. 

The second qualification I have to add to those 
discussed in the previous lecture is Argumentative 
Power. A man may be acute and rapid in his 
thoughts, may be judicious in his adaptations, and 
may be rich in general knowledge, while yet he may 
be deficient in constructing a course of reasoning. 
He may arrive at his own conclusions by a species 
of intuition, or at least by a reasoning he can not 
himself remember or analyze, and be utterly incom- 
petent to translate the method to others. 

Now, a very large part of the preacher's work is 
argumentative. God in His Word reasons with man. 
His holy service is a reasonable service, and every 
man should be able to give a reason for the hope 
that is in him. Men are to be convinced, for it is the 
truth that makes men free from the bondage of sin 
and condemnation, and conviction is the result of ar- 
gument. The heart can be impressed and the life 
changed only where the reason is convinced, and, 



70 



THE CHRISTIAN PREACHER. 



however ignorant a man may be of " Barbara Cela- 
rent," he is moved by syllogistic processes. A mere 
declamation or rhapsody carries no converting power 
with it, however it may excite or inflame the mind. 
There must be truth as the initiative of all true life, 
and all truth runs in rational forms. When we say the 
argumentative preacher is the convincing preacher, 
we are not advocating a dry skeleton argument for 
a sermon. Far from it. We have already endeav- 
ored to show that variety of illustration should mark 
every discourse. Not only should the joints be per- 
fect, but the flesh and skin should exhibit the fullness 
and outlines of health and beauty. The argument 
will be the more cogent when thus adorned, and the 
adornment will be the more satisfying when beneath 
it is recognized the solid structure of a correct and 
complete argument. The preacher will thus often 
conceal his argument while making it, but, neverthe- 
less, the argument is there, and the efficient force of 
the sermon, ceteris paribus, will be in proportion to 
the value of the argument. 

A false argument only weakens a cause. It is sup- 
posed to be one of the chosen defenses of a position, 
and as the hearer perceives its weakness, he despises 
the position, as seen by him only through its false 
representative. Christianity has often had need to 
ask to be delivered from its friends. Shallow minds 
have undertaken to prop it up with ridiculous sup- 



ARGUMENT A TIVE PO WER. y I 

ports from false science and imperfect inductions, 
and have thus made the truth and themselves a 
laughing-stock. There are hackneyed fallacies that 
are found continually floating about, which preachers 
of small caliber use as their effective shot against the 
enemy's bulwarks, but which by their imbecility con- 
firm the enemy in his position. They seem to have a 
charmed life. The demonstration of their weakness has 
no effect upon their use. These fallacies may be theo- 
logical or more strictly philosophical, but in either case 
they injure the cause they are intended to subserve. 

For example, when Christianity is proved to be the 
truth, because of its rapid progress against Paganism, 
the thoughtful hearer remembers that Mohammedan- 
ism spreads still more rapidly than Christianity, and 
is led to see in Mohammedanism greater evidence of 
truth than in Christianity. When it is taught that 
conscience is the voice of God in the man, and then 
the heathen conscience is found casting children into 
the Ganges, the truth suffers by the conflict of state- 
ment and fact. So, when Bible texts are used out of 
their meaning, the matter supported by the quotation 
is only imperilled, not promoted. How constantly 
we hear from ardent Temperance orators, preachers 
of the Gospel, the offensive "touch not, taste not, 
handle not," branded by the apostle as a motto of a 
false religion, repeated as a divine command to ab- 
stain from wine ! 



72 THE CHRISTIAN PREACHER. 

A careful arguer will allow himself no false advantage, 
well knowing that such an advantage is no advantage 
to the truth. He will give his adversary all the bene- 
fit his position can justly claim, so that he may feel 
that truth and not cunning is dealing with him, and 
that his retreat and defeat are not to be reversed. 
One who thus conducts an argument, however ear- 
nest he may be, is not led into harshness of expression 
or roughness of temper, but is calm in the conscious- 
ness of his strength. I speak of " adversary/' because 
the unconverted man is naturally an adversary of the 
Gospel, and brings a captious and critical mind to 
the hearing. Moreover, all exhortation implies a 
possible existence in the minds of those exhorted, 
which is to be overcome by the argumentative force 
of the exhortation. But the fact that the hearer is 
to be regarded as an adversary, does not imply that 
any hostile element exists in the relation of preacher 
to people, or that any offensive expressions are war- 
rantable in the discourse. Scolding, denunciation, 
sneer, and satire are always inappropriate in him who 
should be endeavoring to draw people to Christ, and, 
for this end, to draw people to himself. Prophets 
and apostles may, as inspired guides, use a severity 
of tone and expression which is utterly unbecoming 
the uninspired Christian minister. There have been 
preachers who have usurped these prerogatives of 
the prophets and have used the pulpit as a forge for 



ARGUMENTA TIVE PO WER. 73 

thunder-bolts, but the lack of authority has been so 
apparent to any but the most ignorant and supersti- 
tious, that the thunder-bolt has generally proved a 
boomerang, and knocked over its projector. 

We here rest our description of the mental qualifi- 
cations of the preacher. Let us recapitulate. We 
have asserted that in the make and make-up of his 
mind, he must be acute and ready, of quick and broad 
discernment regarding Scripture truth and its con- 
nections ; that he must have a sound judgment in 
order rightly and seasonably to apply the truth ; that 
he must have regular and industrious habits propor- 
tioned to the great extent and importance of the 
truth he serves ; that he should acquaint himself with 
the general outlines of human knowledge ; and, finally, 
should wield an argument with precision and power. 

In thus describing the mind of a preacher, I am 
fully aware I am setting up a high standard. The 
standard ought to be high. Well might angels envy 
the office of the Christian preacher, and so exalted a 
station demands no ordinary mind. But while insist- 
ing on so full an intellectual character, I would not 
hold it up as a check to the holy aspirations of the 
young. It is true that some of the characteristics 
enumerated must be congenital. Men are born unfit 
to be ministers. No degree of training, no amount 
of piety could adapt them to the work. But some 

of these characteristics, on the contrary, are cultiva- 
4 



74 



THE CHRISTIAN PREACHER. 



ble. A clear view of what is necessary, and a godly 
determination to make the due preparation, will ac- 
complish the end. I would earnestly urge strong 
and broad-minded men to enter the ministry. The 
Church needs them, the world needs them, and, I be- 
lieve, Christ calls them. We have not too many 
ministers. They should be multiplied a hundred- 
fold. We have too many unfit ministers ; too many 
who do not possess the qualities that have been dis- 
cussed ; too many who are mere foragers for a sus- 
tenance, or creatures of circumstance ; too many pro- 
fessional flats who weary the Church and disgust the 
world ; too many in the pulpit who were intended 
for sextons. Because many of these either abuse the 
office or are seen drifting aimlessly on the surface of 
society, the notion has gained currency that there 
was a surfeit of ministers in the Church, and a style 
of reasoning has been used regarding the ministry 
and its numbers, which only befits the matter of 
trades and professions that have money as their end, 
but which has no place in the question of the means 
of growth of the Church of Christ. The Church can 
never have too many ministers. Would God that 
all the Lord's people were prophets ! It is not a 
question of dollars, but of spiritual need ; and until 
the millennial day at least, there can not be too 
many set apart to convert the heathen and edify 
the Church. 



ARGUMENTA TIVE PO WER. j? 

But while thus regarding the ranks of the ministry 
as never too full, I believe it is a sad mistake to sup- 
pose you can make a minister out of any pious mate- 
rial. The office requires men of the highest ability. 
The building of God's spiritual tabernacle must be 
intrusted not to any who offer, but to the Bezaleels 
and Aholiabs, who have been prepared by God with 
natural gifts adapted to the holy and delicate work. 
Parents, friends, teachers, the Church, the college, the 
seminary can judge regarding this, even when the 
young man can not, and, perhaps, often these coun- 
selors will be able to encourage the student where his 
own diffidence would dissuade him. 

I well know that many will assert that I am laying 
too great stress on the intellectual culture of the 
preacher, but when I remember he is to be SiSanriKoS, 
and that in the highest of sciences ; and when I re- 
member that even for a lower position in Church 
office men were (by apostolic command) to be chosen, 
who were not only full of the Holy Ghost, but also 
of wisdom, I can not believe in an under-educated 
ministry. We may have subordinate workers under 
ministerial guidance — the more the better ; but those 
who are to be the supreme directors of religious 
instruction and the recognized interpreters and illus- 
trators of revealed truth, must be such as to com- 
mand the confidence of the Church and of the world, 
not only in their moral integrity, but in their wisdom 
and knowledge. 



76 THE CHRISTIAN PREACHER. 

And this is what we mean by a learned ministry. 
We are not restricting the privilege and duty of call- 
ing men to repentance and to Christ to a few. This 
prerogative belongs to every believer. With his own 
rescue from Satan came the commission : " Go and 
tell thy friends how great things the Lord hath done 
for thee, and hath had compassion upon thee." Every 
believer has the right, and upon him rests the charge 
to do all he can to spread the saving knowledge of 
his Lord. But this consideration is wholly different 
from the question of the ministry, which latter in- 
volves an official relation to the Church and a repre- 
sentative relation to the world. Those divisions of 
the Church which have not practically noted this dis- 
tinction, have often degraded the Gospel and pre- 
sented it in a false light before men. Its dignity and 
truth have been alike sacrificed, and converts have 
multiplied only at the cost of Christianity itself. 

As I have already said, the fishermen of Galilee 
became learned men before they were sent forth on 
their life ministry. They were already men of supe- 
rior minds when they were selected by the Master. 
The apostle Paul, who serves as an example of what 
a Christian preacher, not of the Saviour's own per- 
sonal training, should be, was a man of large powers 
and extensive erudition. In vain do we search the 
New Testament to find a preacher of mediocre tal- 
ents, and the earliest uninspired history of the Church 
affords the same difficulty. The introduction of a dull- 



ARGUMENTA TIVE PO WER. 



77 



minded or semi-educated ministry into the Church, is 
one of the many departures from the primitive system 
which have deformed and crippled its development, 
and against which it becomes us to contend resolutely. 
We can not follow too closely the pattern shown us 
in the mount of apostolic administration, preserving 
both the strictness and simplicity of the ancient 
method ; for the simplicity of the early Church is 
by no means to be confounded with looseness, care- 
lessness, or disorder, as is the thought of many who 
advocate laxity in doctrine and discipline. The ac- 
credited founders of the Church did not, under the 
guidance of the Spirit, act carelessly or clumsily. 
The epistles are not hasty letters thrown off without 
exact thought, and with vague purpose, but with all 
their ease of style and epistolary variety of subject 
(for even the Epistle to the Romans can not rightly 
be called a treatise), they carry a divine weight in 
every sentence, and are not to be judged by human 
standards. When the Church was built on apostles 
and prophets, it was built on a God-selected founda- 
tion, made perfect by the Master-builder. If any 
flaw or blemish were to be found in the apostolic 
writings, so far the foundation of the Church would 
be defective. We can not too pointedly condemn 
the notion that the Church contains in itself the 
power to develop piinciples. It is the Roman Cath- 
olic idea, which allows in its application the widest 



78 THE CHRISTIAN PREACHER. 

departure from Scripture doctrine and practice. The 
Church may develop in size, in purity, in power, in 
grace, but never in the principles of its life and gov- 
ernment. These come only from revelation, and no 
new revelation has been given the Church since apos- 
tolic day. We hear much of development of doctrine. 
It is a phrase of doubtful propriety. If it mean that 
doctrine can subjectively be developed in our under- 
standing of the revealed truth, as, doubtless, is the 
meaning with many that use it, we can not find fault 
with it. But if it mean that new doctrine is object- 
ively developed out of the old or out of the Church's 
infallibility, then we take issue with the statement, 
and insist on the Revealed Word of Godwin the Old 
and New Testaments as the only rule of faith for all 
time. The great principles of truth for belief and 
action were given completely when tjie Church was 
founded, and we have no warrant for adding from 
our own invention the conceits of the nineteenth 
century. We have eighteen centuries of mistakes, 
born thus in departing from the principles of the 
Written Word, to warn us. What was monasticism, 
with its long entail of curses, but a revolt against 
the Scripture teaching of a Social Church ? What 
was the ungodly episode of the Crusades, but the 
adoption of the new principle of the sword far the 
propagation of Christianity ? What was the estab- 
lishment of the Papacy itself, but the supplementing 



ARGUMENTA TIVE PO WER. 70 

by human wisdom of the Divine Word ; the realized 
thought that man could improve on the divine model, 
and form a stronger and purer Church after the pat- 
tern of civil monarchies ? 

The departure at first does not startle, because it 
is begun in godly desire for the Church's growth and 
the world's salvation, or, at least, for the purity of 
the individual Christian ; but with time the new direc- 
tion leads farther and farther from the original order, 
until at length a false principle is hopelessly fastened 
upon the Church as a part of its very life, and a revo- 
lution is necessary to restore things to primitive truth. 
There is not a denomination of Christians now exist- 
ing that is not open to this charge of inventing meth- 
ods that involve new and false principles in the 
Church's life ; and it would be a wholesome and in- 
teresting exercise to review them all, and mark the 
points in which the New Testament has been slighted, 
disobeyed, or deemed insufficient by the guides of 
thought and action in the Church of Christ. But 
such a discussion is foreign to our present task. 

We are led to notice the subject from the one point 
of departure from the New Testament order which 
legitimately comes before us, the departure from the 
rule of a strong-minded and thoroughly cultured min- 
istry* which has been defended on the ground of the 
necessities of the Church and the world. This wrong 
action has produced its abundant evils, as all unscript- 



80 THE CHRISTIAN PREACHER. 

ural or anti-scriptural conduct in the Church must do 
harm. False doctrine and corrupt morals have often 
had their rise in the mistaken zeal of godly men, who 
have sought a new and better plan than Scripture 
gave them of advancing the truth. And when con- 
servative men have lifted up a warning voice against 
such new departures, their faithfulness has been 
greeted with derision, and often with the impugning 
of their motive and denunciation of their spiritual 
coldness and worldliness. Many, conscious of the 
error, have feared such an opposition from active and 
prominent minds in the Church and from a public 
opinion which such minds guided, and have, there- 
fore, rushed into the new idea with the multitude, 
salving their conscience with, " Oh, it's a little mat- 
ter !" and thus establishing a false principle to work 
its evil in the Church for generations. That which 
greatly helps such false movements in the Church is 
the support of the better elements of the world. The 
evil principles adopted are generally such as are in 
use in the world's affairs, and the Church unconscious- 
ly leans upon the worldly judgment which it hears 
expressed on all sides. It is so easy to leave the 
divine oracles for human wisdom. It is, perhaps, 
easier in this day than ever before, when the world 
has put on a friendly and sociable air toward the 
Church, and its newspapers act the part of patrons 
and critics of the Church's life. 



ARGUMENTA TIVE PO WER. g j 

It is very natural to yield to this alliance on the 
score of liberality and humanity, and yet this yield- 
ing is the poisoning of the sources of the Church's 
strength. Instead of the Church being guided in its 
conduct by the Word of God and its ministers, a 
crowd of godless Bohemians break into its sacred 
inclosure, and not only defile everything with their 
pens, but influence votes and decisions, which should 
be made only in the fear of the Lord, and in a prayer- 
ful and unworldly spirit. The Church's position to- 
ward the world should not be different from what it 
was in Christ's day. The world hated Him, and He 
assured His disciples that the world would hate them. 
The Church that is loved by the world has lost Christ. 
The love of the world by the Church (on the other 
hand) should be only the love of compassion and 
godly desire for its redemption. Where it is the love 
of complacency, then, again, we have a Christless, 
Godless Church. He that loveth the world, the love 
of the Father is not in him. 

Now we can not deny that the Church's present 
danger lies in this tendency to make up all differences 
with the world, to kiss and make friends. By this 
mesalliance distinctive Christianity is in danger of be- 
coming merged in a species of naturalism, and all 
that is supernatural and divinely authoritative is to 
give way to schemes and systems of human wisdom. 
Again and again we assert that there is no remedy 



82 THE CHRISTIAN PREACHER. 

for this fearful evil but a faithful, humble, persistent, 
and exclusive return to the Inspired Word ; the hon- 
oring of which will exalt and purify and advance the 
Church, which will appear before the world only as 
its instructor and guide, and never as its companion 
and partner. 

It is in conformity to that Inspired Word that we 
dwell on the necessity of a strong-minded and edu- 
cated ministry, mighty in the Scriptures, as a safe- 
guard against many of the poisonous errors that, 
both in doctrine and practice, are now conspicuous, 
and which even strong minds that are weak in the 
Scriptures, are too ready to propagate with an igno- 
rance that is concealed from the multitude. 
/ There is always present in the Church a tendency 
to rely on impulses from within, rather than guidance 
from without. The uncertain and blind emotion is 
preferred to the Word of God. Schemes and meth- 
ods are adopted that are reeking with carnality, and 
these are called spiritual, because they are said to be 
the action of the Holy Spirit within us, and yet these 
spiritual activities are in the teeth of Holy Scripture. 
I heard a preacher warn his brethren against re- 
sisting the Holy Ghost by preventing women from 
becoming preachers. He thought that his impulse 
was better than the Bible, and that, while resisting 
the Bible was perfectly proper, resisting his impulse 
was resisting the Holy Ghost. • 



ARGUMENTATIVE POWER. 83 

The wild onslaught upon the liquor-saloons by the 
Ohio women, with a travesty of prayer as its accom- 
paniment, was the outshooting of an impulse, that 
had many good elements in it, but was in its overt 
action clean contrary to the teachings of the Word 
of God. Fanaticism is ignorance assuming a divine 
authority, and that Ohio movement was fanaticism, 
and only injured the cause of true religion. The 
Church's history is full to overflowing of this use of 
blind impulses as guides, to the neglect, and even 
contempt, of the Holy Scriptures. 

The only safeguard against this is an educated min- 
istry ; a ministry thoroughly grounded in all the ele- 
ments of revealed truth ; a ministry that knows how to 
correct and control mere passion and emotion by the 
higher authority of the Divine truth ; a ministry that 
brings every proposed scheme to the certain touchstone 
of the Word ; a ministry that recognizes the fact that 
the Spirit speaks to the Churches, not through the 
states or feelings of nervous and excitable people, but 
through the written oracles, without which common 
standard there could be no order whatever in the 
Church of God. That God has left His Church in 
Christian days to the guidance of such an ignis fatuus 
as human feeling, is a doctrine which an uneducated 
ministry may be expected to glorify, but which can 
not stand for a moment by the side of the doctrine 
of the inspiration of the Scriptures, or by that other 



84 



THE CHRISTIAN PREACHER, 



doctrine inculcated by the Scriptures, that God is not 
a God of confusion, but of order. Given the Script- 
ures as an inspired revelation of God, and you must 
have as your necessary sequitur, a ministry thoroughly 
learned in the Scriptures as the only safe preachers 
for the Church and the world. 



DISPOSITION.— MANNER.— HABITS, 



LECTURE IV. 

We have considered the Physical and Intellectual 
qualifications of the true Preacher. We now proceed 
to those qualifications on which the Word of God lays 
the greatest stress. It is remarkable that in the de- 
scription of a Christian minister given by Paul in his 
letter to Timothy, where fifteen particulars are given, 
thirteen of the fifteen refer to the moral side of the 
man. The moral worth and reputation of the preacher 
is of first value for the propagation of that truth 
which is distinctively spiritual, and affects the charac- 
ter of the inmost soul. He has to deal with the 
tenderest and most sacred affections and sympathies 
of men, and hence all his aptness in body and mind 
must find its activity through his moral nature. In 
treating of this most important side of the Christian 
preacher, we may conveniently divide the subject 
into disposition, manner, habits, and spiritual life. 

I. Disposition. The disposition is the result partly 
of temperament and partly of education. It differs 
from manner, in that manner is wholly external, while 
disposition is an inward impulse and tendency made 
visible generally in external acts. It differs from hab- 
its, in that habits are forms or methods of doing, 

(87) 



88 THE CHRISTIAN PREACHER. 

while disposition is a state of feeling. Disposition is 
situated nearer the moral center than the other two, 
but all are directly connected with the moral nature. 
A man is classed according to his disposition, without 
touching the vital questions of good and bad, right and 
wrong, true and false. A good, right, and true man 
may have a most unhappy disposition, and a bad, 
wrong, and false man may have a most happy dispo- 
sition. Esau had a far happier disposition than Jacob, 
but Esau had no appreciation of the good, right, and 
true. False judgments are constantly made regarding 
men by using their dispositions rather than their lives 
as criteria. A benevolent infidel is counted better 
than a selfish Christian. In many social relations he 
certainly is better, but in real worth the selfish Chris- 
tian is far superior to the benevolent infidel, because 
he has the Spirit of God in him, notwithstanding his 
selfishness. In the scales of eternity weight is not 
made by disposition, but by faith in God. 

With all this, disposition is a most important ele- 
ment of efficiency in the godly life, and its character 
is not to be treated lightly. In a Christian minister 
styles of disposition that we should tolerate, perhaps 
even admire, in other men can not be allowed, (i). 
A minister should never be irritable or irascible. The 
oracle is calm, and he who ministers at the oracle 
should partake of its calmness. Anger in man is al- 
ways a mark of weakness, and the teacher of divine 



DISPOSITION. 89 

truth must not willfully carry marks of weakness. 
Even a Moses stains his career and so dwarfs his in- 
fluence by giving way to passion, that he must needs 
be speedily removed from the people by the hand of 
God and yield his place to a successor. An irascible 
disposition is not only a weakener of influence : it is 
a blind to the judgment. It makes the minister a 
partisan and fills him with prejudice. He becomes 
a wolf where he ought to be a shepherd. He creates 
disorder where he should be a peacemaker. This dis- 
position is also a snare to the preacher's own soul. It 
will entangle him in mortifications, experiences of 
remorse, self-condemnation, and despondency, that 
will prove a purgatory of suffering, even if it prove 
not a purgatory of purification. The irascible dispo- 
sition is near akin to the (2) petulant disposition, which 
is ready to take offense at the slightest thwarting of 
the will, and which fancies insult where none is in- 
tended, which renders a man difficult to approach, and 
in a minister deprives him of half his efficiency by 
reason of this barrier to easy intercourse. A petulant 
preacher will show his feelings in the pulpit by a per- 
sonal method of treating his themes, by indulging in 
a complaining or scolding style of speech, and by 
using a captious rather than an impartial argumenta- 
tion in his discourse. (3). The morose disposition 
comes next in order, as one to be carefully shunned 
by the preacher of the glad tidings. He is a messen- 



go THE CHRIS TIA N PRE A CHER. 

ger of God, to declare the grace that brings salvation 
and eternal joy to the soul. His face should be as 
much like the angelic face of Stephen as a heart full 
of peace and joy in Christ can make it. The Jere- 
miahs have their place in the Church's history. They 
sit among the ruins of Jerusalem, and sing the sad 
dirge that impresses the fearful lesson on the children 
of men. But they are not the patterns for Christian 
preachers. No happier errand can man carry than the 
news of a divine love that is ready to forgive the chief 
of sinners and bestow the Holy Spirit upon every 
willing heart. It is a frightful error to bring this 
message, surrounded with lurid light and thunder- 
clouds. It is true that there is a dark background, 
with which God's grace can be well contrasted, but 
let it be a background, not a foreground. Let the 
preacher be a man of genial disposition, ever burning 
with a desire to make all smile around him, and let no 
false sense of dignity lengthen his face or deepen his 
tone. (4). The preacher should, moreover, be free from 
an impulsive disposition. The captain of a ship directs 
his vessel by chart, compass, log, and observation, not 
by whim and subjective fancies. He looks beyond 
mere appearances, and he acts from motives that are 
deep below the surface. The preacher is a captain. 
He has crew, freight, and passengers committed to his 
care. He has, according to the old and expressive 
phrase, "the cure of souls." Impulsive conduct in 



DISPOSITION'. 



91 



him is a risk to many besides himself. The Scriptures 
expressly enjoin the "episcopos" (and he is the mod- 
ern "preacher") to be eyHparr/o, to have that self- 
control that shall repress impulses and make them 
obedient to order and right. He should be known to 
his people as having a well-balanced life that can be 
trusted both for advice and example. An impulsive 
nature may carry both minister and people into doc- 
trinal heresy or irregularity of life on the slightest 
occasion, and in any special crisis it is sure to do dam- 
a S e - (S)« The preacher should not show a careless 
disposition. The impulsive disposition has too much 
fire ; the careless has too little. The careless preacher 
straggles rather than marches, and fires his gun at 
hap-hazard. He has no method, makes little or no 
preparation for any public duty, and believes (or acts 
as if he believed) that a special inspiration will take 
care of him in all his functions. He is the clerical 
sloven that abuses his own gifts and his people's op- 
portunities, while he gives the world the chance to 
talk of preachers as lazy non-producers. (6). The 
preacher should never exhibit a money-loving disposi- 
tion. He is to be dcpiXapyopog. A preacher known to 
be a money-hunter is useless in the kingdom of Christ. 
Christ and Mammon are in exact opposition to one 
another. The Christian conscience feels this, and the 
world's instinct recognizes this. The moment the 
world detects a money-loving preacher, it exclaims, 



9 2 



THE CHRISTIAN PREACHER. 



either delightedly (as finding so high an example for 
its own carnality) or scornfully (as seeing the contrast 
between office and disposition) " he is become as one 
of us." The minister steps down from his throne of 
advantage and mingles with the plebeian crowd, to be 
jostled by them and lose his power with his dignity. 
A preacher, if called to use his gifts in the Church, 
should be provided for in all reasonable living by his 
charge, and beyond this he should not have a thought 
in money matters. If he meddle with silver-mining 
or petroleum or the stock market, he is defiling his 
sacred office. If the Lord of Glory became poor for 
our sakes, we may well be glad to remain poor for 
the sake of His great work of grace. The preacher 
had better rely upon his Lord than on his own shrewd- 
ness in the money-market for his support. If a 
preacher is not called to use his gifts in the Church, 
it is very evident that he is called to support himself 
and family in a legitimate secular calling, and in this 
he can appear as an honest tradesman or officer, but 
should avoid the excitements, absorptions, or ques- 
tionable practices of the speculator. Though not 
directly occupied in preaching, he has the honor of a 
preacher to support, and may, in the providence of 
God, be again summoned to stand in the pulpit. He 
is to bear this always in mind, and to do nothing that 
might afterward interfere with his usefulness by de- 
grading either his character or his reputation. A 



DISPOSITION. 93 

preacher making tents or mending nets is one thing; 
a preacher speculating in cotton or in railroad stocks 
is quite another. The one seeks his legitimate and 
honorable support. The other is a gambler in dis- 
guise. 

If the preacher is settled in a charge where a regu- 
lar and sufficient stipend is given him, any money- 
making occupation or device is the betrayal of a worldly 
spirit that taints all his official work with selfishness, 
and selfishness is wholly out-of-place and pernicious 
in any agencies that represent the unselfish love of 
Christ and His soul-saving Gospel. (7). The preacher 
should be free from a headstrong disposition. That 
he should be firmly settled in his views of truth, and 
in his principles of conduct, none can deny. To waver 
in these is to be an unsafe guide and to forfeit the re- 
spect and confidence of others. When we speak of 
disposition we are not treating of a man's relation to 
truth, but his relation to his fellow-men. The head- 
strong disposition disregards the rights of others. It 
would overcome opinion and purpose not by argu- 
ment, but by sheer weight of persistence. It doubt- 
less often defends this self-assertion to the conscience 
under the plausible name of truth-assertion ; but its 
unreasonableness is too glaring in the eyes of others 
for any sympathy with the excuse on their part. The 
headstrong preacher can not have counselors. He 
can have only acolytes. He will drive independent 



94 



THE CHRISTIAN PREACHER. 



minds from him, and make himself a little pope in 
his parish. He may make a unity in this way, but it 
will be a unity at the expense of the church's healthy 
life, and the probability is that he will extinguish the 
life altogether. Churches with grand opportunities 
for usefulness have been destroyed by preachers who 
would consult no other oracle than their own preju- 
dices. They have made a desert and called it peace. 
The adjective avdadrjS describes this disposition, and 
is found in Paul's list among the characteristics of the 
man who is unfit to be an etu<jk6ito<; in the Church of 
Christ. The u jatj opylAog, jxj) irapoivoq, jur/ TrXrjurrjq^ 
that immediately follow in his enumeration, shows 
the sad length to which this disposition may go, and 
which the actual history of the Church has so often 
illustrated, when the ministers of Jesus have entirely 
lost sight of their heavenly calling and have intro- 
duced the rudeness and violence of the world into the 
Church. The present condition of the Protestant 
Church is not such as to exhibit these forms of ex- 
cess, or at least not to tolerate them if exhibited, but 
the headstrong disposition which is their spring may 
show itself in other less gross, but equally hurtful 
w r ays. (8). The Christian preacher should not have an 
eremitic disposition. He is eminently, though not of 
the world, a man for the world. He is to mingle 
freely and fully with men of all classes and descrip- 
tions. His message is for all. As Paul talked with 



DISPOSITION. 



95 



the chance-passers in the agora as well as with the 
Stoics and Epicureans, the imitators of Paul are to 
court every opportunity of instructing men of high 
and low degree, men learned and men illiterate, the 
salvation they preach beirfg equally important to all. 
To this end a preacher can not afford to be a cloister- 
ed student, except at such stated times as meditation 
and study may be necessary for his work in the world. 
The retiring disposition, which would withdraw him 
from opportunity, must be withstood. Our Saviour 
himself went from house to house and mingled con- 
stantly with peer and peasant, and He, like Elisha, is 
to be the pattern of the Christian minister, rather 
then Elijah or John the Baptist, who were startling 
and arousing as preparers of the way for the steady 
and detailed instruction of those that were to follow 
them. One of the traits of character insisted on by 
the apostle for a Christian bishop is hospitality, and 
that alone tells the whole story of social intercourse 
with his fellows. . He is not only not to be a recluse, 
but he is not to assume a lofty and distant style, so 
as to be separated from easy contact with others. His 
dignity is to be in his character and not in his con- 
trivance. He is to be a man of family, the husband 
of one wife, having his children in proper subjection, 
so that his domestic duties and experiences will fit 
him the better for all the relations of life. The Ro- 
manist doctrine of celibacy is directly at war with 



9 6 THE CHRISTIAN PREACHER. 

the true objects of the Christain ministry, destroying 
that sympathy which should be a conspicuous ele- 
ment in the minister as he prescribes for the spiritual 
wants of his people. Rome, in this, as in her other 
inventions, instead of applying the divine grace to all 
the natural nerves of human life, has formed an arti- 
ficial tyranny, monstrous in iff principles and destruc- 
tive in its practice. It deforms humanity, where grace 
would reform it. 

As opposed to these eight styles of disposition 
which a preacher should never exhibit, we say posi- 
tively that he should be calm, gentle, cheerful, regular, 
careful, disinterested, reasonable, and social — a man 
whom all will respect and most will love, whose words 
of counsel will not be discounted by a life out of 
harmony with the teachings, and who will not be 
simply endured as an official teacher, but will be ever 
welcomed as a trusted friend. 

2. Manner. Leaving now the psychical disposition, 
we look to the outward manners of the preacher, some 
of which are natural and are traceable to birth or edu- 
cation, and some assumed from notions of effectiveness. 
Manner has so much to do with attracting or repel- 
ling men, that it carries with it an importance greater 
than its intrinsic worth. It is only the exceptional 
and philosophic mind that looks beneath manner and 
judges directly by the character and disposition ; and, 
hence, he who would have a passport to all men's 



MANNER. gy 

hearts must wear the outer garments of propriety in 
his intercourse with others. He is not a wise man 
who cares nothing for appearances, any more than he 
who makes a false presentation of himself to his 
fellow-men. The manners of a preacher should ever 
be harmonious with the sacred character of his office 
and the consistencies of a holy life. In describing 
these manners we must keep before us the great aim 
of the preacher as the representative of the Lord 
and proclaimer of His Gospel. He is to sink self in 
his Master's cause and in his love for souls, and he is 
to mould self according to the demands of this high- 
est philanthropy. Manners are so largely a matter of 
choice and determination, that no preacher can avoid 
the responsibility of conducting himself with seemly 
behavior before his people and the world. We might 
almost sum up all we have to say on this head in the 
one sentence, that a minister ought to be a perfect 
gentleman. The word " gentleman " may be hard to 
define in phrase, but yet is well understood by all. 
It is a word that has regard chiefly to manners, and 
describes one who is acceptable in all his social con- 
tact. Whatever may be his real character or tone of 
mind, he controls himself to such an extent as to fit 
in gracefully in all the movements of society, and so 
to approve himself to all. He covers the mistakes of 
others by calling attention to a new subject, and com- 
mends their successes by fixing attention upon them. 
5 



9 8 the christian preacher. 

He looks to see what others like, and then adapts 
himself to their taste while he is in their company. 
He never is boisterous or rude in his speech, however 
resolute and determined he may be in his character. 
He knows that power is not sited in noise or boorish- 
ness, and that an iron hand is best used in a velvet 
glove. A gentleman is not to be confounded (as so 
often he is) with the man of fashion, who has learned 
the lying grimaces and small talk of the salon, and 
who invests his soul as well as his body at the tailor's. 
A gentleman assumes his manners because they are 
right in themselves or advantageous for society ; but 
the man of fashion assumes his manners, because they 
are in the fashion. The gentleman is probably what 
the Greeks denoted by KaXoxayadot, a word which 
implies a moral worth beneath the agreeable manners. 
There have been preachers who affected clownish 
manners, through a strange infatuation that these 
added to their power, because, forsooth, they added 
to their notoriety. In their garments or walk or 
methods of address, they have played the fool, and 
only their undoubted talent has saved them from uni- 
versal reproach. Young preachers, who imitated 
these eccentricities, but who had not the talent of 
their patterns, have speedily gone under. Eccentrici- 
ties are never enjoyed by others. They are only en- 
dured. There may be a sense of humor temporarily 
excited by the sight of an eccentricity in a minister, 



MANNER. gg 

but it can never be a permanent source of pleasure to 
a parish. The man who helps himself first, the man 
who stands in another's pathway, the man who throws 
his person into ungainly postures, the man who af- 
fects an uncouth dress or walk, the man who monopo- 
lizes the conversation, the man who delights in morti- 
fying others, the man who indulges in any filthy 
habit — such as these have no place under the cate- 
gory of " gentleman," while the unfortunate who eats 
with his knife or who blows his nose at the table is 
rather a boor who sins through ignorance. The 
Christian minister should be neither ungentlemanly 
nor boorish. Willful sin or ignorance, in this case, 
may be equally harmful, repelling those who should 
be attracted, and effectually putting a check on all 
religious influence, the only exception to this general 
statement having relation to the boor among boors, 
where his boorishness of course would not be noticed. 

Next to this comprehensive characteristic of man- 
ner noted as gentlemanly, we may mark those forms 
of manner which are used in the pulpit for emphasis 
or to produce the greater impression upon the audi- 
ence. 

In all address to our fellows, there must be art, 
which is only to say that there must be adaptedness in 
manner consciously exercised. No man can be so 
lost to himself as to conduct an hour's service in 
complete unconsciousness of his manner. He may 



I oo THE CHRISTIAN PRE A CHER. 

at times lose himself in his discourse, forgetting 
everything but his message and the persons he ad- 
dresses ; but such a rapt state can not continue long. 
As conscious of his manner, he is an artist, so that 
when we say the manner in the pulpit must be art- 
less, we are not using exact language. The danger 
lies in pushing art to an exaggeration, either beyond 
the point of just influence or beyond all harmony 
with the actual feelings of the preacher. In the 
former case, the art may be of complete accord with 
the preacher's feelings, and yet be so extravagant to 
the audience's cooler state of mind, as to disgust and 
repel, while in the latter case the insincerity is sure to 
show itself and produce a like result. The preacher, 
therefore, has two errors to guard against in respect 
of manner in the pulpit : one involving the moral ele- 
ment of insincerity, and the other evidencing a want 
of control over his impulses. With regard to the 
former, we need only remark that, whatever the man- 
ner, it is to be condemned. It is an imitation of the 
stage, and the stage and pulpit have nothing what- 
ever in common, notwithstanding the popular idea 
that they are run in the same mould. The stage has 
as its object to amuse, and it has as its uniform 
method exaggeration ; but the pulpit has as its object 
to instruct, and it has as its method the simplicity 
that becomes the delivery of truth. Young preachers 
who go to the stage for an example of manner or ut- 



MANNER. I01 

terance, are on the high-road to ministerial ruin, al- 
though they may make a newspaper fame. The stage- 
actor is etymologically and classically the hypocrite, 
and has, so far as he is a stage-actor, no sympathy 
with the preacher and his solemn duties. He will 
teach the foolish preacher who goes to him for in- 
struction, poses, gestures, tones, and grimaces that 
have no more to do with a minister's person than 
Hamlet or Romeo has to do with his theme. 

The other error of overwrought manner in the pul- 
pit, as we have said, shows a want of proper control 
over the preacher's impulses. He intensifies his voice 
to a scream or a roar, according to its tenor or base 
nature. He moves about the platform like a caged 
lion, to the dread of all weak nerves in the congrega- 
tion. He pounds the desk or Bible with doubled fist, 
and flings his arms at every point of the compass. 
His excessive emphasis becomes no emphasis at all. 
His sermon is italicized in every word. In this case 
art should use a repressive influence — should hold in 
check the headlong energy, should modulate cadence 
and temper movement, and so bring the thought into 
proper relief. A power that is held in continues to 
exert its influence over the audience, but in a different 
way from its action when unchecked. In the latter 
case, the audience is carried away by it as the forest's 
debris is carried away by the torrent ; but in the 
former the audience is awed with a sense of a force 



IQ 2 THE CHRISTIAN PREACHER. 

reserved. The experience is varied, but the influence 
is unbroken. The earnest, energetic preacher, who, 
in this way, restrains his vehemence, is ever en rapport 
with his hearers. In the case of the stage-preacher 
any abatement of his exaggeration is absolute flat- 
ness, making a ruinous contrast with his mask and 
buskin. The earnest preacher's effort is only to hold 
his horse in ; the stage-preacher's effort is to whip him 
up to regulation speed. The one has to control a 
power, the other to constitute a power. We can 
readily see how very different must be both their ex- 
perience and their influence. The one has the pleasant 
duty of directing, the other the painful task of in- 
venting, and the one supplies his auditory from his 
abundance, while the other can rarely avoid exhibit- 
ing the scantiness of his theatrical wardrobe. 

Another set of false pulpit manners may be grouped 
around the general charge of recklessness. It is either 
a lack of art or a purposed despising of art on the part 
of the minister. He enters the pulpit either on a run, 
or, perhaps, in a sauntering way. He tosses his hat 
under the seat. He turns over the leaves of the Bible, 
as a child would look for pictures in a book. He 
looks all over the congregation while they are sing- 
ing God's praise. He prays in a mechanical way, 
and turns toward his seat before he has finished his 
" Amen." He does not believe in ceremony; but has 
he never heard of the apostolic rule of decency and 



MANNER. I0 2 

order? Does he not see that the associations of the 
pulpit ought to be sober and solemn, not common- 
place, and even ludicrous? Is there not a certain 
natural dignity that becomes the position and func- 
tion of an ordained preacher before the people com- 
mitted to his spiritual care ? Surely there are instinct- 
ive proprieties that we must not rudely violate in an 
iconoclastic hatred of priestcraft and ritual. There is 
such a thing as sacredness of association, although we 
do not believe in any sacredness of locality, and he is 
really sacrilegious who would defile a holy association. 
There certainly should be a gravity and orderly de- 
meanor in the person of him who delivers God's re- 
vealed truth to a waiting congregation. Recklessness 
is no more proper in this case of a Christian preacher 
than it would have been in the case of Moses, with 
his message to the people from Sinai ; or in the case 
of Paul when telling the curious Athenians of the 
" Unknown God." It is on this ground of a peculiar 
gravity due to the occasion that the clerical gown can 
be safely advocated, without any fear of its bringing 
alb and cope and chasuble in its train. Certainly a 
sober and dignified gown is far more appropriate than 
an awkward or unseemly habit. 

The preacher of reckless manner gives out the 
hymn as if he were simply directing the choir to sing, 
when he should be guiding the congregation into the 
real meaning of the lyric by his earnest and interested 



104 



THE CHRISTIAN PREACHER, 



reading. He reads the passage of Scripture with no 
preparatory study of its full significance, and so with 
no hearty use of the sacred words. In both cases he 
is unwittingly teaching the congregation to be formal 
and mechanical in their worship. The preacher should 
feel that every minute he has in the pulpit is precious 
and privileged time, offering him opportunities to reach 
the hearts of many ; opportunities never, in the case 
of some, to be repeated, and when the mind is gener- 
ally in a peculiarly receptive attitude. He should be 
fully charged with this feeling, and every exercise 
should be all brimmed with solemn earnestness. A 
reckless manner in such a position betrays a lamenta- 
ble lack of appreciation of the preacher's responsibil- 
ity, and shows the hireling in the place of the pastor. 
3. Habits. The habits of the preacher next call 
for our remark as we note the moral forces of the 
pulpit. By habits, we refer to modes of life, and not 
to disposition or personal manners. While the disposi- 
tion was a bent or tendency of the moral nature, and 
the manner was an external matter altogether, al- 
though often the result of disposition, the habits are 
visible modes of life which involve moral principles, evil 
or otherwise, as the case may be. As in the case of 
the dispositions, we shall treat this portion of our sub- 
ject in the negative way, and hold up to view the hab- 
its that are to be avoided. The preacher is to be 
well-reported of by those who are without; he is to 



HABITS. 



105 



have a just and holy reputation, as one who loves the 
good and hates the evil in all their forms ; he is to be 
unrebukable by the outside world for any blot upon 
his character. These are divine directions regarding 
the Christian preacher, and we can not neglect them 
without peril to the Church. When the world recog- 
nizes its own vices in the pulpit, it can receive no 
heavenly message from that quarter. Evil habits in 
the minister, even if they do not amount to crimes, 
have the same general effect. They lead the believer 
to distrust and the unbeliever to blaspheme. We 
may consider in their order the personal, the pecu- 
niary, and the social habits of the preacher. 

(1). Personal. We can not divorce the preaching 
from the preacher. This is a fundamental truth we 
can not too often repeat in pursuing our investiga- 
tion of the preacher's qualifications. The question 
that is the touchstone in every case is this, " Will it 
thwart or hinder the effect of the message ?" and in 
accordance with the response, we make out our por- 
trait. For this reason we are obliged to look at the 
man's personal appearance and dress, as well as at 
his style of disposition and manner toward others. A 
preacher who is slovenly in his attire, allowing his hair 
to be unkempt, his nails uncleaned, his boots un- 
packed, and his clothes unbrushed, will prove a very 
poor conductor of divine truth. He will find very 
small fields of labor, and under his tillage they will 
5* 



I0 6 THE CHRISTIAN PREACHER. 

become " beautifully less." " Be ye clean that bear 
the vessels of the Lord," has a literal as well as spir- 
itual application. Men of excellent ability have won- 
dered why they did not succeed in life, when the only 
reason (which their friends shrank from disclosing to 
them) was their personal uncleanness. It seems a 
childish interference, and a sort of impudence, to tell 
a man to tie his cravat or pull down his vest, and yet 
a man must have very great and .brilliant qualities 
who can live down the injurious effect of such trifling 
irregularities which mark him as the sloven. At many 
of the sloven's habits men feel both insulted and 
ashamed. They expect a preacher to be neat and 
orderly in his appearance before them, and they have 
a right to such expectation, from the nature of the re- 
lation between them. The torn hat or egg-stained 
shirt-bosom is therefore (if customary, and not an ac- 
cidental necessity) a practical insult to the preachers 
charge, which only remarkable gifts of the preacher 
can prevent them from resenting. The people, more- 
over, are to an extent identified with their pastor, and 
in his reproach they suffer, so that his slovenly habits 
fill them with mortification. I know not who first 
framed the saying that " cleanliness is next to godli- 
ness," and I am sure I would not approve the senti- 
ment ; but yet I acknowledge it is very hard to asso- 
ciate piety with willful dirtiness of the person, and 
very, very hard to look upon an unwashed minister as 
a man of God. 



HABITS. i j 

Beside the slovenly habits we may put the un- 
healthy habits, which do not repel indeed, but may as 
examples lead many a young life astray. The use of 
spirituous liquors and the excessive use of any stimu- 
lant, over-indulgence at the table, and (what is seldom 
classed with these) over-study or study at midnight 
hours, are some of the unhealthy habits which it 
should be a preacher's care to shun. A preacher's 
physical life should be a model in its wise distribution 
of time for work and rest, in its right arrangement of 
study, visits, domestic employment, public services, 
and general usefulness with the recreation that is 
necessary for the fullness of efficiency. Persistence 
in a habit injurious to health is, on the part of a 
preacher, the robbery of the Master. It is shortening 
life, weakening the faculties, and thus diminishing the 
amount of work that is the Master's due. In the 
grosser forms of self-indulgence this is readily seen 
and acknowledged, but in the matter of a false system 
of study the mind is too often blind to the truth. The 
sermon-writing is crowded into Saturday night, and 
the preacher goes to bed after midnight to catch a 
troubled sleep and rise on Sunday morning with ach- 
ing head and drooping powers, when he ought to feel 
a giant's strength and rejoice in a clear and healthy 
brain. Or he may tax eyes and cerebrum habitually 
by long sessions of night-study, because then the 
house is quiet and he will not be interrupted by call- 



1 08 THE CHRISTIAN PRE A CHER, 

ers, to which the temptation to every student is cer- 
tainly very great, and the happy, unbroken hours are 
looked to as a luxury. Such abuse of health seldom 
receives the sternness of rebuke it deserves. It rather 
adds to the interest of the man in the eyes of the 
community, and they treat his steady decline admir- 
ingly and romantically, when they should scourge 
him and the reveling minister alike with censure for 
destroying the bodies God gave them to use for the 
preaching of the truth and the upbuilding of the 
Church. It is no merit to grow pallid with study ; it 
should be no passport to honor. Mens sana in corpore 
sano. The mind is best served by a healthy body, 
and every preacher should so intersperse his studies 
with the more locomotive exercises of his ministry as 
to preserve the tone of his physical system. The 
variety which he will find in his parish duties is ample 
for this end, and it is a sorry substitute for this natural 
method to betake one's self to Indian clubs or the 
lifting machine. 

(2). The pecuniary habits of the preacher may 
bring him into great reproach. A speculating min- 
ister draws expunging lines through all his ser- 
mons. His interest in the money-market shows 
small interest in the kingdom of heaven. His eager- 
ness to buy and sell makes his preaching lifeless. His 
people lose their respect for him, and never can 
count him sincere in holding up the incomparable 



HABITS. I0 9 

glories of the unseen and eternal. He is the man 
with the muck rake, when he ought to be the inter- 
preter. An extravagant minister makes a different, 
but equally unfavorable, impression. He is not sup- 
posed to be a worshiper of Mammon taking a chief 
place in the house of God, but he is stamped as a 
self-indulgent man, who can not deny himself any 
gratification that arrests his eye. He is felt to be 
lacking in that self-control which is so important an 
element in the foundation of Christian character, and 
for this reason is liable (as is the speculating minister) 
to the reputation of insincerity in his ministration of 
the Gospel. 

Closely allied to the extravagant minister is the 
borrowing minister, whose visits to his people they 
find so expensive that they take pains to avoid him 
when out of his pulpit. They naturally consider his 
calls to be more concerned with their pockets than 
with their souls. Even though he may be a man 
gifted in conversation, and may, under the direction 
of his conscience, use his gift for the spiritual welfare 
of his people, yet the object will be missed if after 
every exercise of his pastoral function he virtually 
hands in his bill for attendance. The preacher who 
throws the blame of his borrowing habits upon his 
wife's extravagance, exhibits the old Adam in its 
original meanness. " The woman whom thou gavest 
to be with me, she has spent my salary and so I bor- 



1 10 THE CHRISTIAN PRE A CHER. 

row." The confession implied, that he knows not 
how to rule his own house, shows him, according to 
the divine oracles, unfit to take care of the Church of 
God. 

These evil pecuniary habits are too often found in 
those the very soul of whose vocation is soiled by 
any irregularity in the matter of money. Excuses, 
of course, are readily found, as they are for every hu- 
man fault ; but no excuse, however good in itself, can 
save the preacher's reputation. The stain is there, no 
matter how it got there, and this is all with which we 
have to do. 

It is as appropriate here as anywhere to answer the 
question, " Should a preacher who has been guilty of 
gross sin remain in the ministry?" for some of these 
habits to which we have to make so brief a reference 
may easily lead to overt acts that shock the moral 
sense of the community. To put the question in a 
more pointed shape, giving an example of what we 
mean by gross sin, " Should a preacher who has be- 
come a drunkard continue, after a supposed reform, 
to exercise his ministerial functions?" If the reform 
be a true one, it would seem to be a hard verdict to 
shut him out of his important and chosen work, for 
which his experience, moreover, has thoroughly fitted 
him. Besides, it would seem that such a man could 
argue more feelingly with the depraved and abandon- 
ed, having a more vivid sense of the horrors of their 



HABITS. 



Ill 



degradation. These considerations would lead us to 
answer the question in the affirmative, were it not 
that another element of consideration more important 
that all others is the practical one of the personal 
reputation of such a preacher as a stumbling-block 
to the community. The majority of men will not 
believe in the genuineness of his reform, and even 
those that do so believe will look upon him as a weak 
and uncertain guide. His drunkenness will be ever 
before them as they essay to listen to his discourse, 
and all authority will be eliminated from his elo- 
quence. The preacher must have a good report from 
them that are without, or he has no place in the true 
apostolic line. Now, if we apply this rule to the 
case in point, we must answer one question sorrow- 
fully, but firmly, in the negative. The preacher who 
has been a drunkard can no longer be useful as a 
preacher. He may find many ways of honoring his 
Lord and serving His cause where he will not be pub- 
licly observed and criticised, but the position of au- 
thority and influence he has forever forfeited. 

Very many pernicious habits never reach to such a 
length as to fall under this illustration, and the coun- 
sel of a bold and wise friend or the resuscitation of 
conscientious thought may break up an evil habit and 
render the preacher in all things acceptable and ef- 
ficient. 

(3). In the social life of the preacher evil habits 



112 THE CHRISTIAN PRE A CHER. 

will naturally be most conspicuous and therefore most 
harmful. His daily contact with men should im- 
press upon them a sense of the truth of his charac- 
ter and the dignity of his calling. Whatever will de- 
stroy confidence in these must necessarily undermine 
his usefulness and bring discredit upon the. Christian 
ministry. His personal and pecuniary habits have of 
course a social side and touch his social character, but 
there are other forms of habit that belong more di- 
rectly to the social life, to which we now make refer- 
ence as social habits. It requires great watchfulness 
on the part of a preacher of the Gospel to avoid the 
snares that Satan lays for him in the many-sided in- 
tercourse of life. The desire to please, the fear to 
offend, the claims of politeness, the shrinking from 
undue responsibility, the dread of being counted as- 
suming : these commendable causes may break down 
the barriers that ought to exist between the teacher 
and the taught, between the ruler in the house of God 
and those who are under his spiritual sway. Besides 
these virtuous causes there may be the workings of a 
carnal nature tempting in the same direction, until 
these combined causes bring the preacher into ques- 
tionable positions and identify him not with his peo- 
ple as such, but with the godless world. We may 
enumerate a few of these social habits which render 
the minister unfit for his holy office. 

(i). Frivolous habits, which mark the gay world, 



HABITS. ! j 3 

are altogether unbecoming. He may plead his right to 
do as others, that he did not lay aside his humanity 
when he became a minister, that he, too, must enjoy 
life ; but all these excuses, so often given, only reveal 
the moral unfitness of the man the more. A minis- 
ter has not the right to do as others. He stands on a 
higher plane, and the nature of things requires that he 
should walk by a higher rule in the details of daily 
life. What private Christians may do without injury 
to themselves or to others he can not do. If we can 
say "noblesse oblige" the principle is eminently true in 
the case of the Christian preacher. Moreover, the 
preacher's humanity should be of so sanctified a sort 
as to exhibit tastes and inclinations of a more spiritual 
nature than those found in ordinary society. He does 
not lay aside his humanity when he becomes a min- 
ister, but he exalts his humanity and assumes a new 
dignity which inheres in the office. He is to enjoy 
life, but he finds sources of joy in all the duties of 
his sublime vocation, and is not compelled to drink at 
the world's crowded fountains. Identification with 
the world's gayety and fashion must always defile a 
minister's garments. The fast horse, the pleasure 
yacht, the dashing dog-cart, conspicuous jewelry, at- 
tendance at ball, opera, or theater — these are unfail- 
ing marks of a minister low-toned in his piety or 
eccentric unto uselessness in the service of that God, 
the love of whom is put by the Scriptures in exclud- 



U4 



THE CHRISTIAN PREACHER. 



ing contrast with the love of the world. That there 
may be exceptional cases of worthy ministers frequent- 
ing the theater in practical enforcement of a danger- 
ous theory, and not from any low and worldly motive, 
I would not deny ; but I have no hesitation in putting 
such instances under the head of unhappy eccentrici- 
ties. It is a meddling with a clearly-defined impurity 
on the theoretical ground of its possible purification. 
Next to frivolous and gay habits we may note hab- 
its of Undue intimacy with the other sex. It need not 
be urged that a preacher should live above the suspicion 
of looseness. Forced by his position into constant 
association of a confidential sort with both sexes, he 
needs an unceasing watchfulness against indiscretion. 
He is not simply to guard against his own feelings, 
but he is to avoid appearances that could be readily 
misconstrued. He is to parry a foolish admiration, 
that offers some delicate attention, with a polite in- 
difference, that his own integrity be not compromised. 
He is to refuse private interviews, except in such ac- 
cessible places as parlors and drawing-rooms, and in 
visiting the sick he is not to lay aside his circumspec- 
tion. Gallantry or playing the beau at once exposes 
the preacher to the rude, but righteous, shafts of pub- 
lic criticism, while it may lead his own heart and life 
into lamentable snares. The habit of self-laudation 
is a hindrance to a successful ministry. The minister 
is to forget self in his message. He is to hide self 



HABITS. 1 T 5 

behind his Master. For him to expatiate on his own 
merits is to forget his position as ambassador, and ex- 
hibit himself as principal. Asking members of the 
congregation their opinion of his sermon in hopes of 
obtaining a flattering comment, dilating on his pro- 
found studies, and the instances of his marvelous 
power over men, parade of titles and academic honors, 
insertion of laudatory articles in the newspapers of 
himself and his work, publication of the numbers that 
he has gathered into the church, enumeration of the 
revivals he has started ; all these are sickening forms 
of the vanity of small minds, and show a spirit out of 
harmony w T ith the grand, self-forgetful movement of 
the divine life. 

We mention only one other class of habits that should 
be shunned by the man of God, those which sacrifice 
his honor, and thus take from him the strength and 
beauty of truth. The preacher who exaggerates, so 
that the coarse world exclaims, " he lies/' who takes 
advantage of his position to make sweeping assertions 
unsusceptible of proof, who manufactures his facts 
and stakes everything on an antithesis ; or again, the 
preacher who makes engagements only to break them, 
who is ever ready to say yes without any regard to 
the issue, who raises hopes and leaves them to wither; 
these are preachers who are steadily forming a senti- 
ment in the world against the Gospel which they pro- 
fess to preach, for there is nothing on which the 



1 1 6 THE CHRISTIAN PRE A CHER. 

world has such correct notions (however little it prac- 
tices on them) as the necessity of truth and honor in 
a high and guiding soul. Having thus scanned the 
principal dispositions, manners, and habits that should 
be avoided by the preacher of the Gospel, we defer 
to another lecture our view of the spiritual life that 
becomes this messenger of the saving grace of God. 



THE PREACHER'S GODWARD LIVING. 



LECTURE V. 

In the present lecture we are to regard the preacher 
not as he appears before men, but as he lives God- 
ward. We are to enter into his inmost being, and 
touch his motives and feelings and the secret methods 
of his soul. We are to study his connection with the 
Source of spiritual life, and see that this connection 
is such in kind and degree as to justify his position 
in the Church of Christ as an accredited officer and 
teacher of the Word. 

In the mechanical theory of the Church such in- 
quiry would be unnecessary. By that theory men are 
nothing, authority and ritual everything. Grace de- 
scends through official channels, not because they 
are gracious, but because they are official. The 
theory will allow an external seemliness as conformed 
to official dignity, but any inquiry as to the condition 
of the heart would be considered absurd. A Borgia 
is as good as a Paul. Consecration is not disturbed 
by sin. Now, just contrary to this is the spiritual 
theory of the Church, the only theory sustained by 
the New Testament as well as by the testimony of his- 
tory, for in history the nominal Church has again 

and again proved itself no Church at all. The spiritual 

(119) 



120 THE CHRISTIAN PREACHER, 

theory regards the inner divine life of the soul as vital 
to the Church, or any part of it. A Church, or any 
part of a Church, which has no divine life, is an ap- 
pearance and not a reality. Removal from it is not 
schism. Opposition to it is not rebellion. Official 
dignity does not alter the truth of these propositions. 
Outward organization may exist, and men may con- 
veniently call it a Church ; but the New Testament 
Church is not there. The New Testament Church 
differs from the Old Testament Church in that the 
latter had a national side, which the former has not. 
The external reality, which continued in spite of spirit- 
ual death with the Old Testament Church, has noplace 
with the New except as the spiritual life underlies it. 
When that goes, there is no Church at all, whatever 
men may style the corpse. The Kingdom Christ was 
to establish differed from the Jewish kingdom in that 
it was not to be of this world. It was to be a spirit- 
ual kingdom, and, therefore, would have an external 
appearance in the world only so far as the spiritual 
life throbbed beneath it. It is true of the Church as 
of the individual Christian. Each exists only as he 
has the spiritual life. Without that the Church is no 
Church, the Christian is no Christian. In the old dis- 
pensation it was different for the reason we have seen. 
If the spiritual life died out, still the Old Testament 
Church was a Church, and the Jew was a Jew. The 
ritualistic and prelatical organizations have overlooked 



THE PRE A CHER'S GOD WARD LIVING. 1 2 1 

this fundamental difference in the structure of the 
two Churches, and have built on their error most 
fatal practices. 

In accordance, then, with this spiritual theory of 
the Church, we count it of first importance to define 
the spiritual character of the preacher, and to show 
the fullness of his connection with the Head of the 
Church. 

Our first remark is that the true preacher must be 
one who has an enthusiastic love for his Lord and 
Saviour. He is not so much to preach a proposition 
as a person, and the power of the presentation will 
be proportioned to his love of the person. The great 
facts of Christ's mediatorial life should be ever before 
his mind's eyes, and he should be ever conscious of 
the dependent connection of his own life with that of 
his Lord. There is a cold, intellectual way of looking 
at a great truth, and an equally cold way of present- 
ing such a truth with logical exactness ; but associa- 
tion with a truth under these conditions is association 
with a marble statue. Certain demands of the intelli- 
gent nature may be satisfied, and even an aesthetic 
rapture may be reached ; but when the heart's depths 
are considered, this satisfaction and this rapture are 
but as a fleeting thought across the mind, or a flush 
across the face. The profound love of the heart must 
be for a person. The religion of Christ is love for a 
person. The person of Christ as the theanthropic 



I2 2 THE CHRISTIAN PREACHER. 

one, with all the powers and perfections of God, and 
all the sympathy, proximity, and likeness of man, is 
the object of the believer's adoration and affection. 
Out of that personal contact of the soul with Christ 
comes the understanding of all His truth as He 
makes it known in the written Word. The soul that 
so walks with Christ has the key to the divine knowl- 
edge which is recorded for spiritual discernment. In 
love with Christ, he knows Christ's mind, according 
to our Lord's own statement, " all things that I have 
heard of my Father I have made known unto you," 
and according to that other Scripture, " We have the 
mind of Christ." I have no hesitation in declaring 
that in this love of Christ we have the tap-root of 
Christianity. All other graces of the Christian life 
are not only subordinate to this, but actually derive 
their vitality from this. The true seat of orthodoxy 
is the heart. Defective doctrine, even in its proposi- 
tional forms, has a close connection with a defective 
heart. The love of Christ, if it be real, and not a 
sentimental semblance, is the invigorator of the spir- 
itual intelligence. It is out of this love comes the 
power to search the deep things of God. " We have 
received not the spirit of the w T orld, but the Spirit 
which is of God ; that we might know the things that 
are freely given us of God, which things also we speak, 
not in the words which man's wisdom teacheth, but 
which the Holy Ghost teacheth, 7tvevfiarixoii 7trevj.ia- 



THE PREACHER'S GOD WARD LIVING. 12 $ 

rinoc (Tvyxpivovrez (judging spiritual things with spir- 
itual experiences)." Such an exalted position of in- 
terpretation is not in the gift of the schools, but belongs 
to the heart that is closely allied (by that love which 
alone makes a close alliance) to the source of testi- 
mony. The enthusiasm of such a love is not the 
crackling of thorns under a pot, but a full and steady 
surging of the whole life like the grand and perpetual 
movement of the ocean under the attraction of its 
controlling orb. It is an enthusiasm so profound that 
it touches the roots of feeling, so broad that it per- 
meates every conscious faculty, and responds to its 
Infinite Source by an infinite duration. 

The preacher should find in this enthusiastic love 
of Christ the guide to all his preaching. Other con- 
siderations will appear and become elements of his 
decision ; but mingled with these, and controlling 
them all, will be this love of the personal Christ, for 
whom he is an ambassador to the people. The 
preaching that comes from such an origin will always 
be good preaching. It was this that made the Apos- 
tle Paul the brilliant example of a successful preacher. 
He told the secret when he said, " The love of Christ 
constraineth me;" and he showed the action of that 
love in his soul when he said, " God, who commanded 
the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in my 
heart to give the light of the knowledge of the glory 
of God in the face of Jesus Christ." Only a heart 



124 



THE CHRISTIAN PREACHER. 



prepared by love could receive upon it this glorious 
photograph. What is it but this same enthusiasm 
of love which causes him to exclaim, " Yea, I count 
all things but loss for the excellency of the knowl- 
edge of Christ Jesus my Lord" ? When he is dealing 
his heaviest blows at sin, and when he is offering his 
richest consolations and instructions to believers, he 
is alike full of the presence of his Lord and Saviour. 
You see that he never loses sight of the incomparable 
object of his affection, and hence he never lowers the 
tone of his preaching. Before the refined Areopa- 
gites, though with a complimentary exordium and a 
quotation from a Greek poet, he hastens to Jesus and 
His resurrection from the dead. The same Gospel, 
the good tidings of Jesus the Saviour, fell from his 
lips among the rude inhabitants of Lycaonia. The 
personal Christ ever formed the warp of his discourse, 
whatever his place, condition, or circumstances, the 
natural overflow of his heart of love. This practical 
knowledge of the love of Christ, through a responsive 
love to Him, is, in the apostolic philosophy, to be 
filled with all the fullness of God. From such a res- 
ervoir, how readily the preacher can draw ! 

It is perfectly true that every Christian ought to 
possess this enthusiastic love of Christ of which we 
have now spoken, but it is equally true that this high 
level is not reached by many. That for which we 
contend is, that the Christian preacher should not be 



THE PRE A CHER'S GOD WARD LIVING. j 2 5 

one of these many, but should occupy an advanced 
position in the heavenly experiences that are granted 
by the grace of our Lord. 

With this enthusiastic love of Christ, the preacher 
must needs be a man of prayer ; and this is our 
second view of his spiritual life. Prayer should not 
be an event, but a life. He should fulfill the injunc- 
tion, " Pray without ceasing/' not by any abnormal 
development of form with crossings and rosary, but 
by the exhalation of a life surcharged with the divine 
love. In such, prayer is not an effort, but an efflu- 
ence. It is the complement "of walking with God; 
for where there is walking with God there must be 
talking with God. He knows what holy familiarity 
with his Lord is, that it is full of reverence while free 
as childhood's freedom with a parent ; that it has in 
it no thread of earthly vulgarity or rudeness, while 
it seizes eagerly the privilege of unspeakable inti- 
macy, and that it has as its factors the man's confi- 
dence in God and (what is most amazing) God's con- 
fidence in the man. The preacher who holds this 
conscious relation with his Lord can not leave a 
single interest of his parish unsanctified by prayer. 
His people with their needs, and the unbelieving 
members of his congregation, are alike brought be- 
fore God. His lectures and sermons all spring from 
prayer. His associations and conversations, his ad- 
vice, his letters, his executive work, are all baptized 



l 2 6 THE CHRISTIAN PREACHER. 

in prayer. It has become with him so thoroughly a 
habit to carry everything to God in prayer, that he 
could not move in his work except by this divine 
power. 

This prayerful life is not to be confounded with the 
hypocritical life that uses the divine name so readily 
in ordinary social intercourse, and proclaims its own 
sanctity by set pious phrases. The prayerful life is 
not manifested by cant, but by consistency. We are 
speaking in this sketch of a preacher on his side God- 
ward, not on his side manward. We are speaking of 
that which his fellow-man does not and can not see, 
unless by its effects. In the minister, such as we de- 
scribe him, there is no experimenting in prayer, as if 
it were some ruse in legerdemain or exercise of magic. 
His faith would shrink from such a treatment of his 
intercourse with God. His prayer, although in one 
sense a means to an end, is in another and higher sense 
an end in itself, in which all his interests are involved. 
To use the language of the Psalmist, he dwells in the 
secret place of the Most High; he is hid in His pavil- 
ion, in the secret of His tabernacle, in the secret of 
His presence. These words are the inspired defini- 
tions of prayer. The life thus depicted is the life of 
prayer. In such a view of prayer, all formal and me- 
chanical exercises have no place ; Christian paganism 
is impossible. 

I can not refrain from touching here what I believe 



THE PREACHER'S GOD WARD LIVING. 



127 



to be a very erroneous notion regarding prayer and 
its spiritual attitudes, a notion into which devout and 
earnest men seem to fall. From the two parables of 
"the unjust judge" and "the friend at midnight" 
they have drawn the idea that we must be importu- 
nate in our petitions to God ; and from the story of 
Jacob at Peniel they have derived the doctrine of 
wrestling in prayer ; and then to complete the notion, 
they have introduced the Greek word from the Gos- 
pels and tell us to agonize in prayer. They forget 
that importunity is impudence, and that the word 
" importunity" in the parable of "the friend at mid- 
night " is the right translation of dvaideia, which may 
equally be translated shamelessness or impudence. The 
widow, moreover, is represented as annoying the judge, 
and so gaining her end. Can the advocates of this 
theory believe in an impudent annoying of God ? Do 
they not miss the whole meaning of the parables when 
they seek an analogy between the widow and the 
friend on one side, and the believer on the other? 
Surely these two parables are arguments by contrast, 
and not by analogy ; and the argument, if put in the 
form of a proposition, would be, " If this widow can 
succeed against her adversary by annoying a human 
and unjust judge, the believer can succeed by appeal- 
ing to a divine and just Judge against his spiritual 
foes ; and if a friend can persuade another on earth 
through impudence, surely the persevering faith of a 



1 2 8 THE CHRIS TIA N PRE A CHER. 

child of God will be recognized by a loving Heavenly 
Father." The lesson is one of perseverance, but not 
of importunity, as the stereotyped word has it. These 
interpreters again forget that Jacob got nothing at 
Peniel but a broken leg by his wrestling, but that 
when he ceased wrestling and held on in prayer, his 
petition was granted, and he had power with God. 
He prevailed, not by wrestling, but by prayer, and 
we have now most strangely mixed the two things 
together, and talk of " wrestling in prayer " and " wrest- 
ling prayer." An immense amount of religious litera- 
ture indulges in this paradox. You might as well 
talk of " antagonistic peace" and "hostile love." Ja- 
cob's wrestling was his self-reliance. He was going to 
overcome this stranger who had attacked him by the 
Jabbok in the night, probably thinking him a robber 
of the road ; but when, with his thigh out of joint, he 
recognized a diviae agent in this encounter, he gave 
up his vain wrestling, perceived the significance of the 
remarkable incident, and held on to the heavenly per- 
son with a prayer for a blessing. As to the w T ord 
"agonize," as applied to prayer, it arises from two 
errors ; first, the supposition that ayocvlfrjuai and 
"agonize" are synonymous; and secondly, from sup- 
posing that our Saviour bearing the sin of the world 
is any example for us in that regard. 'AyGovlZojjai is 
simply " to engage in a contest for a prize," and when 
the word is used in urging the sinner to salvation, he 



THE PREACHER'S GOD WARD LIVING. 129 

is exhorted to strive like a runner at the games, with 
all his might and attention, to enter the strait gate ; 
and our Lord's agony in the garden, even if the word 
involve what we call agony (which is very doubtful — 
it more likely means "an intense strife of sour'), like 
the strong crying and tears in Heb. v. 7, referring to 
the same event, belongs uniquely to our Lord as the 
bearer of our sins. Because He so suffered, we are 
freed from such suffering. " There is no condemna- 
tion to them that are in Christ Jesus." Now, in op- 
position to all this wrestling, agonizing, importuning 
prayer, the Word of God bids us patiently and in im- 
plicit faith to persevere in laying all our cares before 
God, knowing that He is just and loving, and know- 
ing, too, that He will most certainly give us all that 
we ask as far as His wisdom will allow. This implies 
calmness, and not agony, in the mind of the peti- 
tioner. It is true that when one is in agony, he may 
go to God ; but in that case the prayer can not be 
called an agonizing prayer : rather it is a reliever of 
agony. Nor is that the idea of agonizing prayer for 
which these advocates for pious desperation contend. 
They mean that the prayer itself shall be a torturing 
experience, a fearful struggle, as with a wild beast, in 
which the soul is to be rent and lacerated and left 
half dead. They have a thought that there is some 
virtue in the agony and suffering, as a sort of penance, 
striving to do what Christ has already done for us. 
6* 



I3 o THE CHRISTIAN PREACHER. 

I have been led into this brief episode on the char- 
acter of prayer, because of what I deem the pernicious 
teaching, found in the published memoirs of many 
preachers, who are represented as going through fear- 
ful agonies in prayer in behalf of their flocks, books 
which lead young ministers toward false aims, and 
hold up suffering and groaning as forming the chief 
elements, or at least the surest tests, of a genuine re- 
ligious life. I will not deny that there is much in our 
lives to make us suffer and groan, but I do deny most 
emphatically that the Scriptures, which bid us to re- 
joice evermore, set the suffering, groaning condition 
before us as an end to be desired, especially in that 
highest and sweetest of all experiences, the soul's 
contact with God in prayer; nor is a Christian preach- 
er in any sense a priest bearing the sins of his people 
and passing through an expiatory agony in their 
behalf. 

Closely allied to prayer is meditation upon the di- 
vine Word y and in the secret preparation of the 
preacher for his work, this should hold a large place. 
I do not here refer to the critical study of the Script- 
ures. I have spoken of that in a former lecture, 
when treating of the intellectual qualifications of the 
preacher. But I mean the careful and prayerful ap- 
plication of the truth fresh from the Word to the life 
of the preacher, the impressing of the heart, that is, 
the affections and will, with its vital meaning, so 



THE PRE A CHER' S GOD WARD LI VING. j 3 1 

planting it that it will live and grow and thrive in 
the preacher's life. The ordinary study in preparing 
a sermon does not necessarily do this. Very much of 
the reading of the preacher may even lead him away 
from this important exercise. The very urgency of 
parish cares may interfere with its due regard. In no 
particular do I believe it more imperative in a preach- 
er's life to lay down a rule and abide by it against 
all interferences than in this. The time must be fixed 
and set apart from all other use. You can not mingle 
this exercise of meditation with any other, except 
prayer, of which it may be said to form part. In 
meditation the Word is brought into direct con- 
nection with one's self, showing privileges, powers, du- 
ties, comforts, arguments, that furnish the man of 
God unto every good work. The Word of God is not 
the word of man, although many influential teachers 
are now endeavoring to drag it down to that low 
level. It is the Word of God, with a life and power 
divine, and is in a plane out of all comparison with 
human productions. That there is a human element 
in its construction is very evident, and of that human 
element we may use thoughts and words such as we 
use of men's books. But there is a divine element in 
this Bible that is beyond man's manipulation and 
criticism, to which prophets and apostles and Christ 
himself testify, and this element is not in a part of 
the book, but in all the book, pervading every sen- 



132 



THE CHRISTIAN PREACHER. 



tence from the first of Moses to the last of John. 
Eveiy theory of inspiration that claims less than that 
renders the Bible useless as an inspired book, is di- 
rectly counter to the teachings of Christ, and leaves 
the Church without a trusty guide. The Holy Spirit 
is the author, guardian, and applier of the Word. He 
is the Spirit of truth, and he reveals the truth to the 
believer. The things given us of God are only known 
by us as the Spirit interprets them. So the apostle 
assures us. Holy men of old spake as they were 
moved of the Holy Ghost, and for that reason the 
Scripture is not of private interpretation, but must be 
interpreted by the Holy Ghost to the soul. Great 
commentators who were unregenerate men, have not 
understood the Word with all their learning. There 
is a meaning below the letter that only the heart 
filled with the Holy Ghost can comprehend. And 
this is the meaning that the preacher must reach. 
His meditation seeks as objective to have this holy 
sense of Scripture permeate his being and inform 
every faculty of his nature. He knows that the Bi- 
ble without the Holy Spirit is a snare, just as Christ 
without the Holy Spirit is a savor of death. 

The preacher in his meditation on the Word com- 
pares Scripture with Scripture. It is one Book from 
Genesis to Revelation. Fifteen centuries and sixty 
different men made a perfect unity, because God 
wrought in it all. The preacher sits not at Moses' 



THE PRE A CHER'S GOD WARD LIVING. j 3 3 

feet nor at Paul's, but at the feet of Christ, and re- 
ceives the truth precisely as the disciples received it 
from the mouth of the Master. 

Then only is a Christian preacher preaching aright 
when he is a carrier of God's Word to the people, 
and therefore profound and constant meditation on 
that Word is an absolute necessity in his preparation, 
for God's Word is not simply the letter, but the spirit 
with the letter, and the knowledge of this is gained 
not by scholarship, but by meditation. 

Another feature of the preacher's spiritual life is 
the earnest personal desire for the conversion of souls 
and the edification of the Church. This life is to him 
the grand opportunity, not for personal ease, not for 
earthly gain, but for delivering men from the thrall- 
dom of sin. He sees ruined souls on every side. He 
sees a power that can save them. He sees, moreover, 
that this power is in some sort committed to him, that 
he is permitted to be part of the chain of causality, 
whose last link brings salvation. He is eager to use 
the power. He is not to be discouraged by hard 
hearts or gross sins, for the word he wields is the 
Word of God, living and powerful and sharper than 
any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing 
of soul and spirit, and is able to discern the thoughts 
and intents of the heart. He is engaged in no experi- 
ment, for he works under the stimulus of a divine 
promise, and in the use of a divine power. The 



134 THE CHRISTIAN PREACHER. 

" homo sum et nil humani a me alienum puto " has in 
him a far higher application than ever entered the 
imagination of the noble Carthaginian slave. He 
sees in his fellow-men those for whom Heaven in its 
love has labored. " God so loved the world that he 
gave his only begotten Son that whosoever believeth 
in him should not perish, but have everlasting life." 
This is no mere statement of a dry truth, but a voice 
from heaven announcing the most real of all realities, 
the throbbing fact that touches every human soul, 
and is the one connecting cord of human history. To 
work with God in this dynamic of love, is to him 
like standing by the throne of the eternal glory. He 
feels the godlike impulse in his own heart, and shares 
the joy of heaven over the repentant sinner. No 
botanist could ever so watch over the development 
of leaf and flower, as he watches the growth of grace 
in the hearts of his people, feeling his own soul ex- 
panding with every push of spiritual vitality he sees 
in others. Such a preacher is always full of mission- 
ary zeal, for this principle is the missionary principle. 
He is in thorough sympathy with the Gospel's' prog- 
ress in all parts of the world, and is so informed of its 
triumphs, that his prayers for distant missions have 
no mechanical cast, but are as hearty as though he 
himself were on the foreign shore, and praying for 
the work of his own hands. He sees the movements 
of States and men only as relating to the establish- 



THE PREACHER'S GOD WARD LIVING. 



135 



ment of the kingdom which is to fill the whole earth. 
He knows that the stone cut out of the mountain 
without hands is to strike the image on its feet, and, 
with the iron, clay, brass, silver, and gold broken to 
pieces together, and become like the chaff of the sum- 
mer threshing-floors, the stone that smote the image is 
to become a great mountain and fill the whole earth. 
His longing for souls is thus no vain hunger, making 
wretched the sufferer, but a glorious hope fed daily by 
the action of grace in the world, and hastening to its 
consummate fruition. 

This earnest longing for conversion of men is but 
the normal action of that divine aydirr], which moves 
in God in all His grace toward us, and which becomes 
a motive in one who is begotten of God. It is dis- 
tinct from quXoLdeXqjLx, which finds its exercise to- 
ward the brethren, since it passes beyond all limits 
and seeks its expression wherever man dwells. Of 
all the graces it is the grandest, as the apostle has 
emphatically told us, for all the others have a color- 
ing of human need or weakness or limitation, but this 
stands out as the special feature of the divine image 
in us. In none but a regenerated soul can any sem- 
blance of this grace be found. It is foreign to poet, 
philosopher, priest, or lawgiver throughout all the an- 
nals of paganism. Human nature has not a shred of 
it in its composition. We do find in the natural man 
a faith, a virtue, a knowledge, a self-control, a patience, 



I3 6 THE CHRISTIAN PREACHER. 

a piety, and a brotherly love, all defective as they are, 
but where, out of the circle of the hearts renewed by 
the Holy Ghost, do we see this ayaitrj y this untiring, 
universal love of man, seeking his renewal and salva- 
tion? It is this which especially makes the preacher's 
work so very different from all other occupations of 
man, however dignified and useful they may be. He 
is not the servant of reward, but the servant of a di- 
vine impulse. He does not get his life from his peo- 
ple, but, with them, he gives life to others. In this 
godlike attribute, he is not a receiver, but a source, 
and in its exercise he feels the exalted joy of its ab- 
solute character. 

Another spiritual characteristic of the true preacher 
is his anticipation of the final triumph of grace in 
glory. This is the broad and bright background of 
the prospect ever before his mind. The towers and 
domes of the eternal city are full in view. There is 
where his soul rests, wherever has been its excursus. 
It comes back to that satisfaction of hope, the bliss- 
ful finality, and all its faintness or weariness is re- 
moved. All his labors here have their aim and their 
incentive in that blessed hope, that differs from all 
human hopes in its undiscounted completeness. " It 
maketh not ashamed.'' As we read the apostolic 
epistles, we are struck with the vividness of this fu- 
ture before the apostle's eye. He makes it the ful- 
crum of his lever, whenever he urges Christians to 



THE PREACHER'S GOD WARD LIVING. i^j 

greater zeal and consistency of life. It is the glory 
with Christ, with the body of the resurrection assim- 
ilated to the perfection of the soul, that forms the in- 
spiring war-cry of this heroic general on the field of 
faith. He never loses sight of this grand object for 
a moment. It lightens his labors, benumbs him to 
suffering, makes self-denial joyful, and sheds an an- 
ticipatory splendor upon his person and life. With a 
thousand conflicts upon him, he cries, as above them 
all, " My light affliction, which is but for a moment, 
worketh for me a far more exceeding and eternal 
weight of glory," and again, "The sufferings of this 
present time are not worthy to be compared with the 
glory which shall be revealed in us." The possession 
of this vivid anticipation is what may be called by that 
exceedingly awkward, but indispensable word "heav- 
enly-mindedness." We have the citizen of heaven 
living in accordance with his citizenship and gauging 
everything here by its connections with the ultimate 
glory. By a spiritual instinct these heavenly weights 
and measures are employed — an instinct which is 
strengthened by a constant practice. The preacher 
has in mind that he is to give account of his high 
stewardship, and the bema of Christ is ever before his 
eyes, but it is not a threat — it is an incentive. It 
nerves him to greater energy, not through fear of loss, 
but through hope of unspeakable gain. He is not 
working legally, but lovingly, and the prospect is one 



1 38 THE CHRISTIAN PRE A CHER. 

of an unearthly and unending joy. He sees in his 
anticipation the home beyond filled with the ransomed 
and sanctified, and the Lord of salvation rejoicing in 
the midst of those he has rescued, and he feels the 
connection of his own work and life with this sublime 
consummation. This experience is a perpetual feast 
to his soul. It cheers him when immediate results of 
his labors are not forthcoming, and when seasons of 
spiritual coldness would otherwise depress his ener- 
gies and render him faint-hearted. It prevents him 
from measuring his work by immediate issues, and 
from making the sad mistake of depending on the 
approbation and applause of the multitude. What 
the world thinks of him is a matter of small moment, 
for his work is beyond the reach of journalists and 
statisticians. He labors in faith, and his faith can be- 
hold the harvest beyond all the discouraging obstacles 
that intervene. He recognizes his own commission, 
and he knows the power that came with the com- 
mission, and the promise that came with the power. 
These are sureties enough for him. The problem is 
a simple one. He has nothing to do with counting 
or measuring, only with working and hoping, and 
whatever the world without may think or say, the 
world within his own heart is satisfied. It is no mer- 
cenary feeling that thus has respect unto the recom- 
pense of reward, any more than it was a mercenary 
feeling that led the Lord of grace, for the joy set be- 



THE PREACHER'S GOD WARD LIVING. I3 q 

fore Him, to endure the cross and despise the shame. 
It is the highest form of disinterested activity that 
finds its rest in the joy of the completed benefit of 
the human object. There could be no love and hence 
no worth in the action, if there were not a joy im- 
pending in the success. The fact that this joy is in the 
felicity of others utterly invalidates the idea of a mer- 
cenary motive in the act. The heavenly prospect is, 
then, no selfish one, but the very goal of a godly love. 
It is here we can see the incomparably exalted posi- 
tion of the Christian preacher, who, unfettered by the 
lower cares of earthly accumulation, can give his time, 
talents, and energies to the one direct object of lifting 
earth to heaven. 

Bearing in mind, then, these traits of the spiritual 
life which become the preacher, we can see what 
should be the style of another spiritual exercise which 
belongs to him — I mean self examination. There has 
been, I think, a very pernicious definition given to this 
exercise. It has been made a microscopic inspection of 
motive and thought, with a special view to discover 
all the sinfulness of the heart, in order to its elimina- 
tion. But surely this is no process for a man to 
undertake. The Psalmist threw it upon God : " Search 
me, O God, and kixnv my heart : try me and know 
my thoughts : and see if there be any wicked way in 
me, and lead me in the way everlasting. ,, If a man 
attempt this work, he must make a lamentable failure. 



140 THE CHRISTIAN PREACHER. 

The strongest microscope will not reveal to him all his 
depravity, and if it did, he would be no nearer to its 
elimination. He is on the wrong road for that blessed 
result. Moreover, such a raking over of his sins will 
only fill him with despondency. He will be like a 
sick man prying into the minutiae of his disease, ex- 
amining pulse and tongue for himself, and surround- 
ing himself with a score of bottles of medicines for 
his different symptoms. He will not be likely to re- 
cover, but will add hypochondria to his other troubles. 
Now, no such self-examination is recommended by 
the Word of God. Only twice in the Scriptures is 
self-examination mentioned. In the one case the 
Corinthian Christians are urged to examine them- 
selves and see if they discerned the Lord's body as 
represented in the Lord's supper ; and in the other, 
the same Corinthians are told to examine themselves 
whether they were in the faith, the alternatives being 
the having Jesus Christ in them, or the being repro- 
bates. 

In the first case, it was simply a question as to 
whether they understood the meaning of the eucha- 
rist, and approached it as an ordinance representing 
communion with Jesus. In the other case, it was 
simply a question as to their being Christians or 
reprobates. Were they believers or not ? In neither 
case was there the slightest hint of self-torture, and 
the putting of crucial questions to the soul. Rather, 



THE PREACHER'S GOD WARD LIVING. j^j 

it was a summons to look at Christ and see Him to 
be everything to the soul, and so to settle the ques- 
tion of their Christian standing. It was a cheerful, 
happy exercise, not a doleful and lugubrious one. 
How could one, such as we have attempted to de- 
scribe him, full of the love of Christ, walking with 
God, meditating on His Word, longing for the con- 
version of men, and ever anticipating the final triumph 
in glory — how could such a one willfully renounce all 
his privileges and stultify himself by a morbid in- 
ventory of his sins ? The life such as we have de- 
scribed it, and the critical -analysis of feeling and 
motive, are incompatible with one another. There 
are too many published diaries of prominent believ- 
ers, whose unhappy, nervous condition has been 
spread out before the world as exemplifying a lofty 
Christian experience. The Gospel is glad tidings of 
pardon and peace in Jesus Christ, and the soul that 
accepts the Gospel has no right to be inspecting its 
stock of sin. If it look in at all, it should be to see 
Christ there. Own emyLVGoottsTe iavrovZ, on IrjoovZ 
Xpi&roZ kv vjjLiv kGriv} (Know ye not your own selves 
that Jesus Christ is in you?) Looking unto Jesus is 
the attitude of increasing holiness ; while looking in 
at one's self is the attitude of self-righteousness. What, 
then, is self-examination ? As the Word of God ex- 
plains it to us, it is such a trying or proving (jteip- 
a^ere and doKtfAa^eroo are the Greek words) of our 



142 



THE CHRISTIAN PREACHER. 



lives as to settle the question whether we belong 
to Christ or to the world. This surely is not done by- 
picking over our sins. It is done by directing the 
soul toward Christ, and seeing if, when thus directed, 
His image is reflected on it, if our heart responds with 
gratitude, affection, and trust to His wonderful love. 
Self-examination on the part of a believer, when thus 
reduced to its simplest terms, is looking at Christ, ac- 
companied by a comforting and stimulating assurance 
that we are sustained by His grace. That action will 
immediately suggest and promote the sloughing off 
of any inconsistent habit or questionable principle. 

The preacher should constantly bring his soul in 
this way to the touchstone, and the exercise will be 
like that of prayer, or that of meditation on the 
Word, a favorite source of joy as well as progress. 
We have tried to indicate in this sketch that a 
preacher of Christ's Gospel should be before all things 
else a spiritual man, an example before his people 
and the world of a man walking with God. His in- 
tercourse, therefore, with the world will always be that 
of ministry, and not of fellowship. Wherever he 
touches the world, it will be to impart a benefit, and 
with this object no other will commingle. It is very 
true that every Christian should answer to this de- 
scription, and so our proposition may run in this way, 
that, besides all other special qualifications of body, 
mind, disposition, manner, and habits, which may be 



THE PREACHER'S GOD WARD LIVING. 143 

peculiarly clerical, the preacher should be, in an emi- 
nent degree, a Christian in his spiritual life. And this 
last qualification is the most essential of all. With- 
out it, talents and capacity are only instruments of 
wounding the Saviour in the house of His friends. 



THE PREACHER AND THE WORLD. 



LECTURE VI. 

In the preceding lectures I have endeavored to de- 
scribe the personal characteristics of a true Christian 
preacher in all the departments of his being. In the 
present lecture I purpose to inquire how far and in 
what way one possessing such characteristics could or 
should be connected with the public life of men, out- 
side of purely ecclesiastical movements. 

We recognize in the great march of civilization 
many valuable contributing forces, that have no neces- 
sary ecclesiastical character or connection. There are 
many moral reforms, which may occupy a prominent 
position before the world, and whose influence may 
be of immense benefit to the community ; there are 
political schemes which are conceived and furthered 
in the spirit of a true patriotism ; and there is culture 
in art, science, and literature, which serves to repel 
barbarism and refine society. Now, it is a practical 
question of great importance, to what extent and in 
what fashion shall these agents of civilization be em- 
ployed and directed by the Christian preacher? Dif- 
ferent and contrary views are held. We find a small 
school of earnest men who would cut off all connec- 
tion whatever between the world without and the 

(147) 



I4 8 THE CHRISTIAN PREACHER. 

Church, and shut up all Christian effort to the actual 
communion of saints. One section of this school 
would permit such connection with the world as is 
necessary for direct proclamation of the Word, but 
no more. At the other extreme, we find Christians 
who declare that religion is a matter of the inner life, 
and therefore does not change our intercourse with 
the world. It is a matter between us and God, and 
too sacred to be brought down into the matter of an 
earthly intercourse. The two spheres of Church and 
the world are entirely distinct, and we are in both and 
must live in each according to its laws. This school 
permits a free mixing with the world in all its pursuits 
of business and pleasure, with, of course, the excep- 
tion of anything that is clearly immoral. 

The truth seems to lie between these extremes. 
In the first of these extremes there is a narrowness 
that has the look of moroseness, and is calculated to 
misrepresent the Gospel of love. It is apt to repel 
men from the truth, when truth's propagators imitate 
the tortoise, and, on the approach of a stranger, shut 
up their shell. There is also the aspect of haughty 
assumption in a forced seclusion from the world's 
moral side, or rather from that side which has no im- 
moral character. There is, furthermore, a departure 
from our Lord's example, for He certainly mingled 
freely with all classes and conditions of men at all 
times, living what might be called an eminently public 



THE PREACHER AND THE WORLD. I4 q 

life. He did not, indeed, enter into the political life 
of the day, because, in the first place, there was no 
political life, except for imperial satellites or advent- 
urous intriguers ; and in the second place, His pecul- 
iar calling, as the Messiah, with His unique work of 
bearing human sin, precluded Him from that sphere 
of human action. But He did touch plainly again and 
again the great principles of citizenship in His teach- 
ing. He taught the rendering of Caesar's unto Caesar, 
as well as the rendering of God's unto God. His ar- 
gument to Peter regarding the didrachmon is a per- 
manent testimony to the duty of obedience even to an 
unrighteous exaction. Assuredly, our Lord's life can 
not support the withdrawal of Christians from contact 
with an interest in the world's history making around 
them. 

But the other extreme of identification with the 
w r orld on the part of the Church is equally repugnant 
to a true Christian spirit. How is the Church to be 
the agent of converting the world, if it keep its piety 
for its private edification and presents a worldly front 
toward the world ? How is the power of the Gospel 
in conversion to be illustrated, if the converted and 
unconverted are to present the same appearance? 
And, we may add, what sort of piety will the Church 
have that obliterates the distinction between its mem- 
bers and the world? Surely, as we have before said, 
we must find some practical solution of the problem 



1 50 THE CHRISTIAN PRE A CHER. 

between these two extremes. When we see from the 
Word of God that the unbelieving husband and the 
believing wife must dwell together, we have light at 
once upon the subject. We see that there are walks 
in life where Christian duty forbids a separation of 
personal and intricate relations where the Spirit of 
God has made a separation in spiritual experience. 
To be sure, this is an extreme case, but an extreme 
case best exhibits a principle. We argue from such 
a case, not that the selection of worldly intimacies is 
to be willfully made, but that they are not in them- 
selves sinful, that circumstances may make them nec- 
essary. Still again, and on the other side, the earnest 
and eloquent appeal of the Apostle to the same Co- 
rinthians to whom he laid down the rule about the 
unbelieving and believing husband and wife (2 Cor. 
vi. 14-18), that they should not become unequally 
yoked together with unbelievers (fir/ ylveode arspo- 
gvyovvreg arr^orocg), shows us the danger of any close 
alliance with unconverted men willfully assumed. 
The question seems to resolve itself into this : Can I 
join the outside world in measures of general good 
without putting myself in the unequal yoke? If I 
can, then all the claims of duty as a citizen and mem- 
ber of the community, as well as those of a Christian 
seeking the welfare of those around me, are upon me 
to join the outside world in such measures. But 
surely the yoke is not formed by alliance in doing 



THE PREACHER AND THE WORLD. j^i 

good ; it is formed by the alliance that is uncondi- 
tional. Hence we conclude that the Church or the 
Christian (for the argument is the same) may and 
ought to combine with the world, with the distinct 
understanding that the alliance is only in the inter- 
ests of the public weal, and has no binding force 
where the world's business or pleasures are concerned. 
Wherever, in special cases, by reason of the presence 
of notoriously evil men, the alliance might be misin- 
terpreted, it should be abandoned. No Christian is 
to soil his garments even to do a good deed. If we 
have laid down the true principle, we are prepared to 
apply it to the various practical cases that constantly 
present themselves for decision. 

I. The first field that invites our attention is that 
of national or local politics. There is so much of the 
slime and ooze of society in the elementary move- 
ments of political parties, that not only Christian 
graces, but even refined tastes shrink from participa- 
tion in them. And yet the primary meetings are the 
roots of local, sectional, and national administration. 
There the candidates are nominated and there virtual 
principles are established or at least colored. In a 
1 country where the people govern, this must necessari- 
ly be so. In such a country, moreover, the responsi- 
bility of government is distributed among all, and no 
one has a right to shirk it. It is one of the prices we 
have to pay for a free country, that all classes and 



I$2 



THE CHRISTIAN PREACHER. 



kinds of men must meet together in order to deter- 
mine both opinions and men. Can the Church of 
Christ be absolved from this duty ? Can the Chris- 
tian man be relieved of this burden? For we hold 
that what the Christian man must do in a case of citi- 
zenship, a Christian minister must do. In things indif- 
ferent we may make a distinction between the preacher 
and the private Christian, and many actions appropri- 
ate to the layman might, from the action of the law 
of association, be reprehensible in the preacher. But 
where a duty to the commonwealth is involved, and 
where, by the very nature of the case, the duty can 
not be performed by a portion of the community (as 
can the matter of military service, for example), but 
must be performed by all, the excepting of the 
preacher can not hold. His vote is a power which he 
has no right to forego, because on it depends the wel- 
fare of others. And so his presence and voice at the 
primary meeting must be regarded as a duty of citi- 
zenship. It is not a social meeting which might be 
made a criterion of his tastes and tendencies, but a 
business meeting of the most important sort, and to 
be classed with the meeting at the polls. In such a 
meeting a Christian minister can always preserve his 
dignity, and his presence will do much to repress the 
elements of disorder. If Christian ministers of both 
parties attended the primary meetings, we should have 
fewer unprincipled men put into office, and this is a 



THE PREACHER AND THE WORLD. ^3 

reform that the country needs. Christian men may- 
be on either side of our national politics and maintain 
their integrity. Both parties in the platforms they 
construct seek the good of the country as they un- 
derstand it, and hence any loud advocacy of either 
party by a Christian preacher I should take to be an 
error, compromising his usefulness as a teacher of re- 
ligion. He should be retired and moderate on those 
public matters on which good men differ, and by 
meddling with which he would unnecessarily estrange 
many whom he ought to attract. Only when a 
great Christian principle is attacked ought he to 
come forward into prominence, and advocate the 
truth in the political field. But when we leave the 
distinctive politics of party and come down to the 
politics of any one party, then clearly it becomes his 
duty in conjunction with his fellow-citizens to see to 
it (so far as he has power) that men of truth and hon- 
esty are nominated to offices of government. That 
this should be done without laying undue stress on 
the political side of his life to the detriment of his 
spiritual influence is, of course, clear. A preacher can 
go to the primary meeting and can speak his mind 
freely, and yet not be what is known as a ward poli- 
tician. He has not put on the unequal yoke by a 
faithful endeavor at the fountain-head of influence to 
put righteous men into office. 

Whether the preacher should hold office is quite a 
7* 



154 THE CHRISTIAN PRE A CHER. 

different question, involving many new considerations. 
To hold office is to abandon the active work of the 
ministry, and the cases must be very rare where this 
could be warranted in foro conscientice. There may 
be trying times in the history of the State when 
great exceptional means must be taken, and a With- 
erspoon may find it to be his duty to leave the pulpit 
and to enter the hall of Congress ; but the preacher's 
power for God and the truth is eminently a power 
of the pulpit and not of the political rostra. We can 
readily conceive of a crisis where the preacher will 
even rightfully shoulder his musket and hurry to the 
front, but it must be a crisis indeed, which will ac- 
count to every one for the exceptional case. A Chris- 
tian preacher exerting his influence for the nomination 
of righteous men to office is one thing, and a Chris- 
tian preacher himself running for office is quite an- 
other. The latter suggests ambition in its original 
sense, a style of action wholly incompatible with the 
independent and dignified position of Christ's minis- 
ter. The candidate for office becomes the butt of 
every penny-a-liner of the opposite side, and every- 
thing that can be raked up of inconsistency in his 
former life is exaggerated and much altogether in- 
vented, and the whole thrown at him by ten thousand 
idle and wanton hands. Now, if a minister is forced 
into an unpleasant position, let him bear it meekly 
and with a martyr's spirit, but do not let a minister 



THE PRE A CHER AND THE WORLD. j 5 5 

rush voluntarily into the pillory and court the addled 
eggs. It will seriously interfere with his power as a 
Gospel preacher. There are enough good men out of 
the ministry to take office with its honors and its 
burdens, and no necessity in ordinary times can be 
pleaded by the preacher for offering himself to the 
suffrages of the people for political advancement. 
The public sentiment is perfectly correct on this 
point, and shoulders are shrugged by men generally 
when a minister becomes a candidate for office. Let 
the minister be satisfied with supporting good men 
for public situations in the Government, while he 
himself keeps out of the pancralion of candidacy. It 
will show no want of concern for the welfare of the 
State, and for the triumphs of virtuous and sound 
principles, for the minister to keep in the background 
and use his influence without the suspicion of selfish 
interest. That a minister has not the capacity to 
manage public affairs is a common allegation which 
has no more foundation than the other frequent as- 
sertion that a minister can not manage a matter of 
finance. If habits of careful thought and a training 
in morality unfit a man for public affairs and financial 
management, then we will grant that a minister 
should be kept out of public office and such situations 
as involve financial cares from incapacity. No man 
understands human nature better than a minister, 
and no man is so called upon to exercise patience, 



1 56 THE CHRISTIAN PRE A CHER. 

forbearance, impartiality, and other governmental 
virtues as he who reigns over a parish, and is ever ap- 
pealed to as a guide. No man, moreover, so habitually 
studies and practices the expedients of economy and 
is more exact in the matter of income and outlay. 
The judgment against the administrative or financial 
ability of ministers is like that against their home 
discipline in the proverb about " ministers' sons/' the 
result of noticing with particular attention the failures 
of conspicuous men. Ministers are conspicuous be- 
fore the community. They are public men, seen and 
known of all. They are, moreover, counted a conse- 
crated and holy class. Therefore, when any one of 
such a class comes short in any positive way, the en- 
tire community remark it and rush to hasty general- 
izations. It is not, then, on any ground of incapacity, 
any more than on the ground of non-interest in the 
State's welfare, that we should debar preachers from 
public office, but only on account of the heavenly 
expediences of the holy calling. 

2. Another field of effort which lies open to the 
large-hearted citizen is that of Moral Reform, and 
the preacher's relation to this becomes an interesting 
question. 

That all true moral reform should meet the sympa- 
thy and co-operation to some extent of all Christian 
preachers need not be argued. The question is, what 
is that extent? How far should preachers identify 



THE PREACHER AND THE WORLD. ^7 

themselves with special forms of moral enginery 
for the improvement and elevation of mankind ? It 
would be a hasty response, that there can be no limit, 
that wherever good is sought, there the preacher 
should be. For there are other considerations to be 
entertained besides that of beneficent and philan- 
thropic objects. Evil methods, improper associates, 
and disproportion of energy may impose very decided 
limitations on a wise and true minister. To rush into 
any proposed movement of benevolence with a toss- 
ing up of the hat and a reproach for those who de- 
cline to join, is a cheap way of gaining a sanctified 
fame among certain classes ; but those who seek good, 
and not fame, will weigh each case, and make no for- 
ward movement under questionable auspices. In 
many schemes of benevolence, the pernicious princi- 
ple of doing evil that good may come, is practically 
accepted as a true philosophy. Fairs are established, 
at which theatrical exhibitions and theatrical morals 
are introduced, and young maidens educated to be 
brazen-faced ; balls are instituted, at which fashionable 
display and lascivious waltzing form the chief attrac- 
tion ; lotteries are formed, and the young are se- 
duced into gambling, and all this for the building of 
an orphan asylum, or the support of the worthy poor! 
Are ministers to be caught by this bait of Satan ? 
Are they to be shamed into supporting these worldly 
iniquities by the ready reproach, " You have no lib- 



1 5 8 THE CHRISTIAN PRE A CHER. 

eral sympathy for the distressed ; your narrow-mind- 
edness makes you selfish," when the liberality of 
these benevolent ball-goers is but the activity of their 
carnal appetites under a new name? Alas! for the 
liberality of those who have to be amused in their 
lower natures before they can be induced to give ! 
Charity, given through a charity ball, is in one sense 
disinterested benevolence ; it is benevolence that has 
not the slightest interest in its objects. 

The Christian minister should uncompromisingly 
set his face against all this worldly system of doing 
good, which has so often made its inroads into the 
Church of Christ to pollute its sanctity and weaken 
its true life. The support of the Church and the 
promotion of schemes to ameliorate the condition 
of man should never be soiled with methods of 
doubtful virtue. The stain will run all through to the 
very end of the action. The cases referred to as in- 
stances involve moral obliquity. There are other 
classes of false method which are evil by reason of 
their associations. Anything that mixes the commer- 
cial business of men with the guidance of the Church 
shocks the godly sensibility. " Running churches " (as 
it is significantly called) by a sort of stock company 
plan, working up the stock by commercial methods, 
getting the preacher who will draw the multitude of 
itching ears, advertising in the newspapers as they do 
the last new sensation at the theater ; these are in- 



THE PREACHER AND THE WORLD. jjg 

stances where the sacred law of association is vio- 
lated, and religion is degraded. Nor is it only the 
Church, but every style of moral reform inaugurated 
by Christian men on Christian principles, that must 
adhere to the requirements of this sacred law. No 
moral reform can rest on a basis of public amusement 
or of pecuniary gain. These are false foundations 
that will sink in the end and bring ruin on the reform. 
The minister can not afford to link his name and po- 
sition with such short-lived and unseemly schemes. 
Nor can he embark in works of public reformation in 
fellowship with those who by their profession or their 
lives despise the truth of God. It is a temptation too 
readily yielded to, when we find prominent men who 
maybe of immoral lives or of pronounced infidel senti- 
ments, earnestly advocating a cause of reform, to join 
with them in societies and on the platform in the 
common interest. The Christian minister always 
compromises his sacred character by such an alliance. 
We should remember that our Lord, when demons 
were ready to vouchsafe their testimony in His be- 
half, declined their assistance and forbade their co- 
operation. The principle should be maintained by us. 
Communion with men of false lives or ungodly 
teachings in a reform movement will not only bring 
the Christian preacher to their level in the eyes of the 
community, but also undermine his own steadfastness 
and lead him from the Gospel plane of benevolence 



1 60 THE CHRISTIAN PRE A CHER. 

to a vague and unchristian philanthropy. There may 
be a style of consent and official co-operation on the 
part of all sorts of men which we must gain in all 
works of public reform ; but that is a different thing 
from the close and intimate relations of copartner- 
ship to which we are now referring. 

In seeking the elevation of the community, we will 
be obliged to persuade public officers, and these may 
be men of very false lives, but in so doing we do not 
appear before the world as in any close association 
with these ; that will destroy or secularize the influ- 
ence of the Christian ministry. The work is to be 
wrought on the world about us, and we must there- 
fore come into contact with it. The preacher has it 
as a duty to subserve the public welfare. He has no 
right to see crime and the agencies of crime on every 
side, and content himself with the direct ministry of 
the Church. His office is in one sense for all the 
world. He must not fear to denounce public evils, 
and to take strong and decided measures for their 
suppression. The more influence he has, the greater 
is his responsibility in this regard. The elements of 
evil in a community will gladly denounce the inter- 
ference of the preacher in public affairs, and seek to 
remand him to the cloister, for they would be rid of 
his power lifted up against them, but no opposition 
do they so sincerely respect and inwardly approve as 
that of a man of God, whom they believe to be above 



THE PREACHER AND THE WORLD. ifa 

the selfish motives of the mass of men. It is because 
of the real moral power of the preacher in the cause 
of public order, that the promoters of disorder would 
cry " shame " on him when he puts his hand on the 
lever of a reform engine. To the superficial observer 
only will such public -spirited conduct have the ap- 
pearance of worldly scheming. The two are as wide 
apart as the poles. One is all selfishness, the other 
has not a grain of selfishness in it. The one goes out 
to float with the popular current, the other goes out 
to breast that current and to counteract its force. In 
a land like ours, where each citizen is a responsible 
portion of the government, every Christian minister 
should be a leader of his people in every style of true 
reform in the State. If all Christians, with their min- 
isters at their head, would forget their political party 
affinities and move in solid phalanx upon the glaring 
abominations that defy both decency and law among 
us, these evils that now curse and threaten the very 
life of the State would instantly succumb, as the 
grass before the prairie fire. It is because ministers 
are remiss and excuse themselves from great public 
undertakings that these enormities are allowed to 
flourish. No ! let it be clearly understood by all that 
a preacher, though never to be a worldly man, is al- 
ways to be a public man, and let no coward enter the 
ministerial ranks. The notion that a minister is a 
sort of male woman has grown out of the remissness 



1 62 THE CHRIS TIA N PRE A CHER. 

of ministers in this very matter we are considering. 
We should disabuse the people of this fallacy and 
show them that we abstain from the worlds sins, but 
not from its management ; that we are ready to go to 
the front and engage in the thickest of the fight in 
order to destroy the haunts of vice, and secure the 
quiet Sunday of our forefathers. 

3. A third field of activity that opens before the 
preacher is that of Literature and Art. There can be 
no question that aesthetic culture has been a powerful 
agent in modern civilization, and yet the history of 
Athens shows us clearly that the Christian idea is not 
a necessity in sesthetic culture. Architecture, stat- 
uary, painting, poetry, oratory, and essay -writing 
reached their culmination when Christianity was un- 
known. Democrates, Pheidias, Zeuxis, Sophocles, 
Demosthenes, and Plato have had in modern days 
their imitators, but not their equals ; and yet there is 
no doubt that Athens in her proudest period of cult- 
ure, from Pericles to Plato, was a grossly immoral 
State, and that her scholarly refinement was no pro- 
tection against the flow of vice. The deepest degra- 
dation was not only synchronous with the most ex- 
quisite achievements of art, but actually appertained 
to the artists themselves, just as we see the same 
combination of the beautiful and the debasing in the 
Italian masters of modern art. Our inference from 
this is, that art in itself and literature in itself have no 



THE PREACHER AND THE WORLD. ^3 

power to produce a Christian civilization ; and here 
we must guard against a misconception. Art may 
busy itself with themes drawn from Scripture story, 
and yet have nothing Christian in it ; aesthetic effect 
being the only aim in the pencil and brush. A Raphael 
may have his mistress sit for a portrait of the Virgin 
Mary, with precisely the same object in view with 
which on the next day he delineates a Venus, namely, 
to make a thing of beauty. Because one is called the 
Virgin Mary, it has no claim to be called Christian. 
Christian art or Christian literature must differ from 
the Greek or Italian. It must have a higher aim than 
merely beauty. To be a fine-art, beauty must be its 
goal ; but it must be a beauty all saturated with spir- 
itual truth. It must be a beauty that shines forth 
from the truth, as the radiance from the sun. It 
must be a beauty that touches the aesthetic sense 
while its underlying truth is awakening and sanctify- 
ing the sentiments and affections of the soul. Such 
is the beauty of one of our Lord's parables. Such is 
the beauty of Paul's prose ode to divine love. And 
such beauty may be carved out of the marble or laid 
in line and color upon the canvas. The question 
how far art can be the handmaid of religion is really 
the question for the Christian minister to consider. 
Outside of religion there may be an innocent amuse- 
ment in art, but surely a Christian preacher will no 
more make it his set business to promote mere amuse- 



164 THE CHRISTIAN PREACHER, 

ment in art (however much he may approve of it) 
than he will make it his business to promote base- 
ball and croquet. He knows that art by itself, has 
nothing Christianizing in it. It may help refine man- 
ner, but it does not refine the heart. A Parrhasius 
will delight in his victim's tortures, while he treats his 
subject in the most aesthetic manner. There is a very 
common refinement in modern as well as ancient civ- 
ilization, that bows gracefully and extends the right 
hand in courtesy, while the left hand clutches a sti- 
letto. A Christian minister, therefore, wishes some- 
thing more than mere art to which to give his ear- 
nest and positive support. It must be an art that 
actually teaches the soul the great principles of the 
doctrine of Christ. We are not talking now of what 
a Christian should do, but what a Christian preacher 
should do, one who stands out from among his fellows 
as a watchman on the walls of God's Zion. How far 
is such a one warranted in engaging in works of art 
and literature ? 

We have rarely had cases brought before our 
minds of ministers who were skillful with the chisel 
or the brush, and yet we may imagine such who would 
act in perfect consonance with their sacred character 
if they should convey great Gospel truths to the eye 
as well as to the ear, while for these to become pro- 
fessional sculptors or painters would be to abandon 
their peculiar office as preachers of the Word. If we 



THE PREACHER AND THE WORLD. ^5 

apply these principles to literature, we should expect 
to see the pen of the preacher ever ready to put 
forth any poem or essay that would illustrate Chris- 
tian faith, and the essay might take any form, whether 
that of the didactic discussion, the dramatic composi- 
tion, or the novel. The limits to be observed would 
be twofold : first, that the writing be a thing of beauty, 
or else it is not a piece of literature (in the sense we 
here use the word) ; and, secondly, that it leaves not 
the plane of distinctively Christian ethics, or else the 
preacher's function is compromised. If Art be faith- 
fully used as the handmaid of religion, it can not be 
amiss in the use of the preacher, whether the art be 
exhibited by manual means or by the use of the 
tongue ; but we are not to lose sight of the fact that 
in the name of Art much folly has been wrought in 
Israel, and Art itself set up as a divinity to be wor- 
shiped in the place of Christ. Art in alliance with 
true religion is a useful element of a true and perma- 
nent civilization ; but Art in alliance with the de- 
praved passions of man is a plausible and wily fiend 
corrupting society with its soft, voluptuous touch. 

We have not counted the Press in our discussion of 
literature, because the Press can not be reckoned as 
belonging to the fine-arts. Its object is not the pres- 
entation of beauty, but of facts and comments upon 
facts. The Church has largely used the Press as its 
agent, and a most successful agent in propagating the 



1 66 THE CHRISTIAN PREACHER. 

truths of the Gospel. The millions of Bibles in hun- 
dreds of languages that have been distributed through 
the earth testify to the value of this agency, and make 
us believe that the invention of printing was like the 
Alexandrian universality of the Greek language, one 
of the great providential arrangements in history for 
the spread of the Gospel of Christ. And as the Bible 
has used this medium whereby to visit the whole 
world, so a religious literature (using the word in the 
broader sense) has been scattered by the same means 
to the furtherance of true religion. Surely, so far, we 
find nothing wherein the Christian preacher may not 
appropriately take part. The more he can multiply 
books of wholesome religious truth, the better for 
the world that he is seeking to enlighten and save. 
But when we come from books to newspapers, and 
survey that distinctive field of current literature, 
which differentiates our age from all others, the prob- 
lem is more mixed and the solution not so easy, 

Very many preachers are newspaper editors, some- 
times of dailies, but generally of weekly prints. As 
the daily newspaper must always be chiefly a collect- 
or of general news, I can not see how a Christian 
preacher can willingly and of choice make the editing 
of such a journal his main work, or his work at all, 
for a man can not edit a daily newspaper kv napipycp. 
If his tent-making should take this form, he could 
not criticise ; but if the way were open for him to 



THE PREACHER AND THE WORLD. i£y 

make full proof of his ministry, it would be a per- 
verse, Jonah-like service to enter upon the duties of 
the daily editor, in which his pastoral and evangelis- 
tic character would be, perforce, almost wholly 
eclipsed. But many of our weekly papers are called 
religious papers, and in their editorial chairs we gen- 
erally find preachers sitting. They are often men of 
the highest grade of intellectual ability and ecclesias- 
tical faithfulness, and it can not be denied that their 
papers, conducted with great good judgment, and exhib- 
iting sound doctine, carry the truth to many homes, 
and carry it in a manner that is peculiarly acceptable 
to many. Some of these editors devote their whole 
time to their weekly publication, while others con- 
tinue their active functions as pastors, having asso- 
ciate or managing editors to attend to the business 
details of the office. 

This editing has the elements of the work of relig- 
ious tract making and distribution, and so far is in 
the direct line of a preacher's functions. Many 
homes may find the religious thought conveyed to 
them through their religious newspaper a leaven of 
godliness, coming as it does in the attractive and 
readily-handled form of a newspaper, and so far more 
apt to be used, especially by the young, to whom a 
religious book is often a bugbear. 

Now, if Christian preachers can furnish such a me- 
dium of evangelization and spiritual quickening to 



1 68 THE CHRISTIAN PREACHER. 

the community, they are certainly engaged in a work 
altogether consistent with their holy calling, and the 
Christian minister who happens to be an editor, 
should not be reproached. 

The only exceptions that can be taken seem to re- 
late to special cases, and not to the general fact. It 
can hardly be right for the Christian preacher to 
abandon all personal work for the use of his pen, nor 
should he allow in his paper anything that would 
compromise his Christian character, even under the 
plea that the "other editor " inserted that particular 
article. The public do not know the details of the 
editorial sanctum, and attribute every article in the 
religious newspaper to its well-known ministerial 
editor, and they also hold him responsible for the 
character of every advertisement that appears in his 
sheet. 

Now, this conduct of the public must be respected 
for Christ's sake, and the ministerial editor must not 
assume his position unless he is ready to control and 
supervise all parts of his weekly publication. Nor 
should the ministerial editor appear to the world as a 
seeker after riches, as running his paper not to evan- 
gelize and sanctify the world, but to fill his pockets. 
Such an object soon leads to worldly compromises 
and the insertion of dishonest and ad captandum arti- 
cles, framed to attract subscribers to the prejudice of 
godly instruction. If anything in a religious news- 



THE PREACHER AND THE WORLD. jfig 

paper with a preacher as its editor can be associated 
with that preacher's name to his detriment, then this 
thing is unfit to insert, and- its insertion, whether by 
managing editor or clerk, or any one else, is an injury 
to the Church of Christ. I believe that there is much 
to correct in this department of clerical activity, and 
that preachers should be as watchful over their breth- 
ren in the editorial chair as they are over those in the 
pulpit. 

The ministerial editor of a religious journal may be 
an unspeakable help to the Church, and a potent 
agent in evangelization, or he may very readily be- 
come a harmful point of conjunction between the 
Church and the world. 

8 



THE PREACHER'S RELATION TO 
HIS WORK. 



LECTURE VII. 

THE PREACHERS RELATION TO HIS WORK. 

If I have been correct in drawing the portrait of a 
Christian preacher, then surely no one should attempt 
to enter upon the holy office without a true consecra- 
tion of heart. It is an office that was not instituted 
by man, nor can man furnish the higher qualifications 
for its duties ; but the Spirit of God must prepare the 
heart and form the life for him who is to be a ruler in 
the house of God. There is a popular theory that 
the Church of Christ is a voluntary association, like a 
lyceum or benevolent society, and that anybody with 
a fair amount of tact can manage it ; that its pulpit 
should be open to any one who can talk rhetorically ; 
that its ordinances are formalities of ornament or de- 
cency; that its platform should admit every well- 
disposed person, and that it should look to the cult- 
ured world generally for its support. We have not so 
learned Christ. We believe the Church to be begot- 
ten of the Holy Spirit ; that it is the mystic bride of 
Christ ; that its officers are called of God ; that its or- 
dinances have both a divine significance and a divine 
power ; that its members are cleansed from sin by the 

blood of the Lamb of God, and that Christ is ever 

(173) 



174 THE CHRISTIAN PREACHER. 

present with His Church by a gracious manifestation 
unknown to the world. Into such a Church worldly- 
minded men have no right to enter as members, much 
less as ministers. Yet in all the Church's history (ac- 
cording to the apostolic prophecy, Acts xx. 29 ; Col. 
ii. 8 ; 2 Tim. iii. 1-9) worldly-minded men have rushed 
into the Church and defiled the temple of God with 
their worldly wares. Carnal ambition, a love of power 
or display, has entered the pulpit and degraded it. 
Holy things have been made common to the delight 
of Satan and to the grief of the Spirit of God. As 
the result of this, the advance of Christ's truth has 
been checked, and judgments in various forms have 
begun at the house of God. Rancor, hate, strife, 
persecution, with the utter removal of spiritual can- 
dlesticks, have marked the course of the historic 
Church as the reward of its dalliance with the world. 
No thoughtful Christian can review this history with- 
out a strong desire to see the Church separate itself to 
its Saviour and Lord, and reap the blessed fruits of 
such faithfulness. Especially does it become the 
man preparing to enter upon the ministry of Christ's 
Church to regard the sacredness and solemnity of the 
step he is about to take, and see to it that the love of 
Christ is his prevailing, constraining motive in his ac- 
tion. Trifling here is an insult to the Majesty of 
heaven, and a contribution toward the humiliation 
of the Church. No one should enter the Theological 



THE PREACHERS RELATION TO HIS WORK. iy^ 

Seminary as he would a School of Art or Engineering, 
for the Lord's ministry is on a very different plane 
from that of a human technic. There should be a 
perceptible atmosphere of Christian brotherhood, and 
the spirit of the world should be banished, when men 
congregate to study God's revealed truth and enroll 
themselves as the Lord's ministers. The seminary 
should not chill the godly heart, but increase its 
warmth and strengthen every grace. It should prove 
a quickener of every spiritual faculty and not simply 
address itself to the intellect of its students. The 
seminary should, as the vestibule of the pulpit, give 
the holy afflatus that the pulpit should ever exhibit. 
It is lamentable that this is not always the case, and 
often students who have entered the seminary with 
warm and zealous affections, have left it with a pain- 
ful sense of spiritual loss. Sometimes professors are 
responsible for this in presenting to the students a 
hard, perfunctory front, and sometimes students are 
themselves to blame in not using diligently the means 
of mutual edification. Perhaps it is sometimes the 
result of using the Bible critically and not devoutly, 
making the course a controversial preparation in be- 
half of the Bible rather than a spiritual bathing in 
the Bible. Whatever may be the cause, here is one 
place to stop the inroads of error and worldliness into 
the Church. Let a true consecration of heart (so far 
as this can be ascertained) be the sine qua 11011 of a 



1 76 THE CHRISTIA N PRE A CHER. 

seminary course, and let the consecrated heart be 
encouraged and strengthened in its seminary expe- 
rience. Let Christian work among the poor and sick 
and destitute be united with the teachings of the 
lecture-room, and the ministerial life be begun in all 
its germs. I know no happier picture than that of 
a band of young men, in the first flush of their experi- 
ence that the glory of Christ is all that is worth living 
for, reaping their firstfruits of joy from their new 
fields and talking together of the triumphs of grace 
which they have witnessed. This should be the typic 
seminary picture. 

If this be the seminary life, then, when the novitiate 
quits the course of probation, he will not be filled 
with the base desire for lucrative positions, but will 
simply seek to find a spot where he can exercise his 
gifts for Christ and salvation. To such souls places 
will be always offered. The alternative of " candidat- 
ing " is not only disagreeable to the candidate, if he 
have the proper sense of his office, but is calculated 
to degrade the office in the eyes of the Church and 
of the world. Let me here quote a letter written by 
a minister in response to an invitation to preach as a 
candidate. I take it from the paper called the Church 
and People, and from the issue of October 18th, this 
year : " I have received an invitation to preach a 
trial in Blank church. This I have declined to do on 
the ground that the whole system of trial-preaching 



THE PREACHER'S RELATION TO HIS WORK. iyy 

and competition-praying is inconsistent with the re- 
spect which is due to my work and office. I could 
not approach Almighty God in prayer and preach the 
comfortable words of Christ while oppressed with the 
feeling that I was running a race with twenty-one 
brother clergymen in an open competition for a large 
salary and an attractive house." The editor (the 
Rev. Mr. Bromfield) adds : " Such examples point to 
one of the greatest dangers which the Church has to 
encounter in these days, the degradation of ministers 
into mere office-seekers. Unless a strong tide of spir- 
ituality and public sentiment among the clergy and 
churches meet and counteract this danger, the cause 
of Christ, as interpreted by the conduct of professing 
Christians, will be brought into contempt. ,, As w T e 
have remarked in another lecture, we have no right 
to associate our ministerial office with money. If a 
church or board invite us to a special charge, then 
the money question is one that is legitimate, not be- 
cause we are ministers, but because we are parties to 
a special contract. Without this engagement, we are 
to support ourselves in any honorable, secular way, 
and preach the Gospel as we may have opportunity. 
If we take whatever opportunity is offered, however 
small be the support (if it only be a support), and 
faithfully work in the field thus opened, God will 
take care of our future. We are seeking His glory 

among men, and not money. Our missionary heroes 
8* 



1 78 THE CHRISTIAN PRE A CHER, 

are examples to us in this regard. They live on the 
smallest pittance and are satisfied, and they never 
look forward to increase of emolument. One desire 
fills their souls, and that is to make Christ known, 
and they disregard all else. Hence their noble lives 
and heroic achievements. What is true of the candi- 
date at the beginning of his ministerial life, is true of 
every preacher already stationed in a charge. A rest- 
less desire to get into a more remunerative charge is 
wholly unworthy of a Gospel preacher. One who 
leaves a charge where he has been spiritually pros- 
pered, and where he can rightfully expect indefinite 
expansion of successful labor for Christ — one who 
leaves such a charge for no other purpose than to get 
more salary, is scarcely the one to expect spiritual 
prosperity in his new field. His soul is too low to 
gather the lofty fruits of grace. It is a sad and sig- 
nificant fact that the moment a pulpit is vacant, 
it is besieged by fifty or a hundred of Micah's Le- 
vites. 

But some will say in despair, " How is a preacher 
to better his pecuniary condition ? " and the answer 
is negatively j " certainly by no means that will degrade 
him or the sacred calling," and positively, " by waiting 
until he is clearly called to receive a more remunera- 
tive charge." But the answer will go deeper than 
this. It will say, " Have no anxiety about money 
matters ; be satisfied with your support, live according 



THE PREACHER'S RELATION TO HIS WORK, jjg 

to your income, and seek no more than your church 
can afford to give you." 

There may be a private talk with deacon, or elder, 
or trustee, as to the wisdom of an increase in the sal- 
ary, when the pastor sees that the finances of the 
church can bear it, and that his own honest wants 
demand it ; but that quiet matter is a very different 
thing from the public rush after places furnishing 
larger salaries. The latter betrays a false spirit and 
does incalculable harm to the Church. The preacher 
is to be a living witness against the world's universal 
policy of self-seeking. He labors for others and not 
for himself. In this labor he will put up with incon- 
veniences, endure hardness, forego rights, and shrink 
from soiling his pure garments. Such a preacher is 
always taken care of. He does not trust the Lord in 
vain. But the ambitious, restless preacher, ever 
grasping at fame or money, is, in proportion to the 
development of this false desire, destroying his own 
peace as well as his usefulness for the truth. His in- 
creased salary will give him less satisfaction than his 
small one. When our Saviour's command is to be 
anxious about nothing, what sort of preacher is that 
which is exhibiting continually before the people an 
appearance and a speech full of anxiety for a more 
remunerative charge ? The world is delighted to be 
able to point the finger of scorn at a Christian minis- 
ter, and say : " There is your godly preacher. He is 



l8o THE CHRISTIAN PREACHER. 

just as anxious to get a larger salary as any one of us. 
He talks about being dead to earthly things, while he 
is as fully alive to them as any of those he assumes 
to teach." And nothing can prevent the world from 
speaking in this way, and speaking rightfully too, but 
a genuine conformity to our Saviour's instructions on 
the part of the Christian minister. Any practical op- 
position to these instructions is sheer carnality. There 
is, of course, with all unbelief, a readiness to support 
itself with examples, and if ministerial examples can be 
found of restlessness and anxiety, unbelief is charm- 
ed, and writes their record in huge letters and red ink. 
It is as bad for a private Christian as for a minister to 
distrust the Lord, but the minister's example is far 
more gainful to the enemy and hurtful to the Church. 
On this whole matter of money, the Church needs 
a very thorough revision of its practices. This is not the 
place to discuss the general question of the Church's 
relation to pecuniary wealth, but we have a right to 
say that while preachers are not to be anxious or 
money -seeking, the people of God are not to be nig- 
gards toward those who serve them in the Gospel. 
The love of money is a human vice. It is one of the 
forms of the great cancer, selfishness, that belongs to 
the diseased race. In its insidious character it per- 
haps surpasses all other vicious passions, and hence it 
is Satan's most potent instrument to destroy souls 
and to dwarf Christians. 



THE PREACHER'S RELATION TO HIS WORK:, jgl 

Because a minister is never to be anxious, we can 
not affirm that a Christian congregation is to starve 
him. Because a minister is to suffer martyrdom 
cheerfully for Christ, no Christian congregation need 
suppose that it is called upon to furnish the faggots 
and the fire. The average pay of Christian ministers 
in this country is the same with the pay of the better 
class of manual day-laborers, and, of course, much less 
than the pay of journeymen artisans. Ministers ought 
to be satisfied with this, but congregations ought not 
to be satisfied with it. It should make the churches 
of the land ashamed in sackcloth that they give less to 
the support of their ministers than they do to their 
house-servants. It is not from the right of the min- 
isters that I would argue the point (ministers are not 
to press rights if they have them), but from the con- 
temptible niggardliness of the people. If the Church 
had a just appreciation of the Lord's gift in ministers, 
it would provide amply for those who have given 
their lives to its edification. And yet we hear these 
words read in open Presbytery (in one branch of the 
Church) as the candidate is called to the pastoral 
office : "And that you may be free from worldly cares 
and avocations, we hereby promise as proper support, 
and oblige ourselves to pay to you the sum of five 
hundred dollars a year;" and to the music of this 
sweet welcome the wife and six children follow the 
new pastor to the parsonage. Shame on the churches 



1 82 THE CHRISTIAN PREACHER. 

that have no higher conscience of duty or apprecia- 
tion of privilege ! However we may rebuke ministers 
for want of proper qualifications, we would stop the 
mouths of such churches from complaining, and charge 
them with utter unworthiness to possess any preacher 
at all. 

In order to prevent anything that looks like self- 
seeking on the part of preachers, the Church should 
have an organized system of bringing together unem- 
ployed ministers and vacant pulpits, by which, in a 
quiet way, consistent with the dignity of the Church 
and the self-respect of ministers, churches w T ould be 
able to act intelligently without the pernicious custom 
of candidating. A committee could be intrusted with 
the delicate matter — a committee of experienced and 
judicious men, appointed by the chief ecclesiastical 
body of the district — and to this committee churches 
should apply, and on this committee ministers should 
rely. The committee would keep a complete record 
of all unemployed ministers, and exhibit this to every 
applying church, giving information regarding each 
name, and adding, if seen fit, their own judgment in 
the matter. The church could then use all independ- 
ence in making a selection. The objections to the 
method would be, first, the touchiness of the churches 
that do not wish any outside interference with their 
affairs — a feeling which is proper only when the inter- 
ference is officious ; and, secondly, the place-hunting 



THE PREACHER'S RELATION TO HIS WORK. ^3 

spirit of the minister, which is never proper. The 
minister should act like a modest girl and let all the 
advances come from the other side. 

A question is likely to be asked just here. It is, 
" What is a preacher of mature years to do when he 
finds himself deprived of a charge ?" He has for 
twenty or thirty years been accustomed to preach and 
administer his parochial work, and for this only is he 
fitted. He can not obtain a clerkship, nor can he 
perform manual labor in any competition with the 
many who are ever ready to fill the offered situa- 
tions. He has, perhaps, a family dependent upon 
him, and it is his duty to support them. How is he 
to do it? Must he not perforce become a beggar for 
a position ? Must he not seek a charge with the plea 
that he must have bread ? 

This is one of the most trying and difficult cases 
involved in this subject, and the answer can not be a 
simple one. The case will have varying aspects, and 
the answer must be modified accordingly. If the 
man is superannuated or disabled by sickness, it is as 
much his congregation's duty to provide for him as 
for a family to provide for an invalid father. A con- 
gregation that would not provide for a disabled pas- 
tor, who had faithfully served them in his health, 
might profitably receive a missionary from the Zulus. 
Perhaps also it might cast a doubt on the pastor's 
faithfulness, if the church should exhibit, after all his 



l8| THE CHRISTIAN PREACHER. 

labors, such a heathenish cruelty. The relation of 
pastor and flock is a spiritual one, and the tie is sa- 
credly tender. We are not to take a commercial view 
of it. The conduct of ministers in going about from 
place to place to be " hired/' ever ready to change, so 
as to use old sermons, has done very much to give 
the commercial character to the relation of a preacher, 
and men are wont in some places to treat a preacher 
as if he were a business clerk, to be hired at the 
smallest market price, and to be dismissed at any time 
without ceremony. No church so acting can have an 
exalted spiritual life. It is nothing but a cold acad- 
emy or lyceum, without even the finer feelings that 
those names historically imply. When a church rec- 
ognizes in its preacher a man of God, a messenger of 
the truth, an ambassador for Christ, it will dismiss all 
ideas of trade in the solemn contract it has entered into 
with him and be governed in all its conduct toward 
him by considerations of a spiritual order. Pastor 
and people should so act in harmony that no pecu- 
niary question should ever be allowed to arise, and 
when the faithful preacher is disabled, the Church will 
naturally see that his wants are met. 

But if a preacher is deprived of a charge by his own 
act, in his attempt to get a larger salary or in a sim- 
ple desire for a new field of labor, he has assumed a 
false position, and has only himself to blame that he 
has become a clerical waif. He has shown by his 



THE PREACHER'S RELATION TO HIS WORK. ^5 

conduct that he lacks the due sense of his function 
and the faith which he should exhibit to the church. 
If, however, the separation is made by the church 
without other cause than the desire for change, and 
so the case takes on its saddest form, the sympathies 
of all will justly be excited for one who thus becomes 
a victim to the cruel worldliness of a church. We can 
not but believe that in every such case, however, the 
man of faith will have his way made both plain and 
smooth, and, as God's faithful servant, will find the 
cake baken on the coals by the angel. 

Too often a preacher's own faults are the cause of 
his removal from a charge. He grows indolent and 
neglects his study, or he gives his time to other inter- 
ests than those of the church, or he manifests a disa- 
greeable temper and disposition toward his people, 
or he fails to use the opportunities of his position for 
the growth of the church. A church will often 
through its officers let a minister know that he is 
derelict, and the kind interference is sometimes re- 
sented, when it should be gratefully received and 
practically pondered. A. church must conserve its 
high spiritual interests, and if a pastor stand in the 
way of these, he must be cut off, and in his exile he 
can scarcely claim a right to criticise the conduct of 
churches or charge upon them the helplessness of an 
unemployed ministry. We believe that wherever a 
preacher is wholly given to the Lord's cause, and la- 



1 86 THE CHRISTIAN PREACHER. 

bors with conscientious diligence for the edification 
of the church, he will so bind a church to him in af- 
fection and respect, that they would as soon think of 
dissolving the church itself as of dissolving the rela- 
tion subsisting between pastor and people. The Lord 
does make provision for His ministers, whatever ap- 
parent examples to the contrary may be offered. 

A Christian minister should never go for counsel to 
a worldly man. The rich man in the congregation, or 
the eminent lawyer, if he be not gifted with the spir- 
itual discernment of a child of God, is not the man to 
give advice to a minister of Jesus Christ. Whatever 
may be the difficulties of a preacher of the Gospel, he 
degrades his office when he consults a worldly mind 
regarding its discharge. This appealing to a godless 
world for its support or its criticism is all too common. 
We thus let the hoofs of cattle in to tread the courts 
of the Lord. The affairs of Chrises kingdom can not 
be understood or appreciated by the men of the 
world, and if they meddle with them, it is to defile 
them. It is a profanity to seek the approbation of an 
unsanctified judgment in the matters of Christ's spir- 
itual Church, and the preacher who does this forgets 
the indignant exclamation of Paul, " Do I seek to 
please men? For if I yet pleased men, I should not 
be the .servant of Christ. " 

But with men of spiritual discernment his inter- 
course should be unrestrained, and the counsel of 



THE PREACHER'S RELATION TO HIS WORK. f&7 

such he should prize. The officers of the church 
should never be men of straw, while the minister 
monopolizes the management. However wise he 
may be, he needs the wisdom of others to correct his 
errors, and in the multitude of counselors there is 
safety. The church's life is healthier the more it 
avails itself of its united wisdom, and the pastor's po- 
sition is rather that of a moderator and president 
than that of an autocrat. 

A wise pastor will not only have many counselors 
of the right sort, but will on the same principle en- 
deavor to evoke all the talent of the church in active 
exercise for the general welfare. He will have a 
genius for finding something for every one to do, a 
class to teach, a poor family to visit, a sick-bed to 
watch beside, a straying member to restore in the 
spirit of meekness, a young man to advise, a sewing 
circle to organize or attend, a prayer-meeting to es- 
tablish in a destitute neighborhood, a desponding 
soul to encourage, or some lonely one to cheer with 
Christian attention. Indeed it may be considered 
one of the high and holy arts of a pastor thus to 
make his church a hive of spiritual industry. His own 
duties will be made far more delightful and far more 
successful, when he is the leader of such an active 
host. Among active workers carping criticism, petty 
jealousies, and spiritual restlessness have no place, and 
a minister who lives in, with, and for his people can 



1 88 THE CHRISTIAN PREACHER, 

always apply this panacea to ecclesiastical evils. Too 
often the preacher forgets to excite this co-operation, 
and thinks that the whole round of parish duties be- 
gins and ends with himself. There are many earnest 
souls that only need guidance to find a field of Chris- 
tian labor, but who, through ignorance of the way, 
practice an enforced idleness; and there are others 
with talents purposely laid away in a napkin, who 
ought both to be stirred up to a sense of responsi- 
bility, and to be offered the fitting opportunity. 

The notion that a church is a collection of people 
and a preacher preaching to them is certainly very 
defective, and shows but a superficial acquaintance 
with the spiritual polity and principles of the Church. 
The picture of a preacher preaching to the heathen 
is made to serve for the idea of a church. The sphere 
of the evangelist and that of the pastor are very dif- 
ferent, and it is the latter with whom we have chiefly 
to deal in these lectures, as being the " preacher " of 
our ordinary language. The pastor is an integral part 
of an organism. He is to fit into many portions and 
work in harmony with these. Isolated working on his 
part would indicate paralysis and disease of the organ- 
ism, from which any abnormal growth might be ex- 
pected to arise. The pastor is to teach, 'tis true, but 
he is to teach teachers, he is to give instruction in ac- 
tivity, he is to lead an army against the enemy and 
not go alone to the combat. He is so to consolidate 



THE PREACHER'S RELATION TO HIS WORK. 189 

his people, so to give them a united and consistent 
life, that their life will not depend on him. If he 
should be taken away, the church will lose him, but 
not itself. The church that is gathered simply as the 
following of one man, is not in a sound condition. 
Only one side of its church life is developed. The 
side of church activity is unsound. Whatever activity 
there is, does not proceed from its own life, but from 
that of the pastor. The cultivation of this independ- 
ent activity of the church, so far from separating pas- 
tor from people, always binds them together with the 
closest bonds. It is the pastor that does everything 
himself, who fails to attach himself to his flock. 
They feel they can let him go at any time without 
harming anything, for another will come and assume 
the burden. No joint work has cemented the inti- 
mate affection of the two parties. It is, therefore, 
every way for a pastor's interest (if we use no higher 
motive) to stir up into exercise every gift that his 
people possess, and make the church a full-charged 
battery of blessings to the neighborhood. I need not 
add that this fellowship in work brings out the most 
charming experiences of the Christian life, and that it 
serves to relieve- the ministry of one-half its burdens. 
In bringing the people to this energetic condition, 
the preacher is to depend under God on his faithful 
expositions of duty and privilege from the Word of 
God. When the people understand that God's Word 



190 



THE CHRISTIAN PREACHER, 



would make the minister not a proxy, but a guide, 
they will accommodate themselves to the new-found 
truth, and be found saying each to God through the 
minister, " What wilt Thou have me to do ? " Then 
will appear the need of executive ability and practical 
wisdom, rightly to answer this question, and to be the 
Lord's steward in distributing the work. 

The question of public services in their number and 
character has often arisen of late years. There has 
been a growing dissatisfaction with the stereotyped 
two services of a Sunday, and various expedients 
have been suggested as a substitute. I am sorry to 
see that in some quarters a single public service each 
Sabbath is advocated. 

The Sabbath rests on the fourth commandment. 
Take away that foundation, and there is no Sabbath, 
except the vague and visionary one derived from tra- 
dition and physiology. Those "ten words" which 
God wrote with His own finger (whatever that may 
mean — it certainly is. something supernatural), and or- 
dered to be preserved as the central object of care in 
the innermost sanctuary, could not have been for the 
Israelites as a nation, but as the Church of God. 
That Church is one down to the judgment day. 
These " ten words " are not to be abrogated, but 
maintained, not always to be shut up in an ark {that 
would do only when the Church was national and 
local), but hidden in the hearts of God's people. The 



THE PREACHER'S RELATION TO HIS WORK. \gi 

Egypt or house of bondage from which the Church 
escaped is mentioned in those " ten words/' or rather 
in their preface, because the Church's history is one 
from then till now, and because also Egypt is repre- 
sented in the inspired volume as the type of that 
worldly state out of which every renewed soul is de- 
livered by divine grace. " The land which the Lord 
thy God shall give thee," is declared by the apostle 
Paul in the fact of its quotation by him to have a 
far more extensive reference than to the land of 
Canaan which Israel should possess. So that all the 
arguments commonly used to relegate the decalogue 
to the category of old and obsolete Jewish statutes are 
valueless. Now we have the command touching the 
Sabbath occupying the very center of the sacred doc- 
ument, and containing one-third of the matter of the 
whole. Is there no meaning in this? Are we to 
brush all this away with the broom of the " new criti- 
cism ? " Let us adhere to the Word, and beware of 
false lights. 

The Sabbath is a stop-day. The Hebrew word 
means " rest " in the sense of ceasing, not " rest " in 
the sense of "lying down at ease." The one word is 
Shavath, the other is Nuach. It is the day for stop- 
ping ordinary labor, for ceasing the earthly work, as 
God ceased His earthly work, according to a just 
analogy between things divine and human. 

Now, this stop-day suggests to the godly mind, as 



1 92 THE CHRISTIAN PREACHER. 

the proper antithesis of earthly work, heavenly work. 
The holy convocation is a conspicuous feature. The 
study of divine revelation is another. The two com- 
mingled probably formed from the beginning a large 
part of the Sabbath occupation. Our experience 
seems to teach that the more of this method of 
spending the Sabbath is adopted, the better for the 
people in keeping them from a vain, wandering abuse 
of the holy time. And yet we can not ignore the 
manifest dislike to the old arrangement in our 
Churches, which dislike is witnessed by the scant at- 
tendance upon the second service of the Lord's day. 
My own belief is that the dissatisfaction is created by 
two causes : first, a generally diffused doubt as regards 
the obligation of the Sabbath, a doubt that has been 
strengthened by many ministers, who have confound- 
ed the Sabbath with the Jewish ritual ; and secondly, 
the baldness and monotony of our public services. 
With regard to the former doctrinal point, I will not 
here say anything further, except to call the atten- 
tion of my brethren who are making light of the Sab- 
bath to the fact, that the godly men and women of 
Europe are making great efforts to recover their lost 
Sabbath, and that a day of rest from labor in order 
to cultivate knowledge and life Godward is in perfect 
harmony with all the principles of the divine govern- 
ment. The Church, we should reason d priori, must 
have its day of assembly. 



THE PREACHER'S RELATION TO HIS WORK. jg$ 

As to the second point, there seems room for a ref- 
ormation. There are two parts of public service, to 
wit, worship and instruction. In each department we 
are at fault. The worship in most of the non-prelat- 
ical churches is vocal only in the preacher, except in 
the hymns, and even these are stolen away from the 
people in many cases by four living creatures, who, 
instead of leading, monopolize the heavenly song. 
The hymns should certainly be secured for the con- 
gregation, even at the sacrifice of a nightingale soprano. 
The worship should be expressed by all, as far as its 
character will permit general expression. Neither 
preacher nor choir is commissioned to worship for a 
congregation, and silent worship is greatly benefited 
by being interwoven with audible worship, in arousing 
and enlivening the worshiper. But not only can we 
profitably secure the hymns for the people, but there 
is no reason why the grand Psalms of David may 
not be responsively read by preacher and people in 
the very manner that some of them were evidently 
designed to be used, and if we add the joint voic- 
ing of the Lord's Prayer by preacher and people, and 
the "Amen" responses of the congregation, we shall 
have refreshing elements of worship in our services 
that will relieve them of their present heavy charac- 
ter. In the other part of service, instruction, there is 
again a monotony hard to bear. On two occasions in 
the same day the preacher gives his people a set dis- 
9 



194 



THE CHRISTIAN PREACHER. 



course. They have the same general type, are run in 
the same mould, and yet have no connection in 
specific subject. The general style grows tedious, 
and the difference in subjects confuses. If the second 
sermon were illustrative of the former, the case would 
be better, but even better than that would be the to- 
tal change in the general style of the preacher's part 
in the second service. He has given a sermon, a set 
discourse, in the morning. Let that suffice. And 
now when the people come together for the second 
service of the Lord's day, let the preacher expound 
the Scriptures carefully in course and in a familiar 
way, with map and blackboard, showing the people 
practically how to study and search the Scriptures, 
and giving them a renewed relish for this most im- 
portant duty. 

By this variety in the services, they will prove at- 
tractive, and that from no false or worldly lure, and 
the two convocations of the Lord's day (we believe) 
may be successfully sustained. 

My dear young brethren : In the seven lectures I 
have had the honor to address to you, I have put be- 
fore you in a very plain way the points of character 
and conduct, that to my observation have appeared 
most important in one set apart by the Lord Jesus to 
bear the standard of His saving truth among men. 
In concluding the course, let me express to you my 



THE PREACHER'S RELATION TO HIS WORK, jqj 

hearty congratulations that God has led you to this 
highest plane of human life and privilege ; that, de- 
nying all the stronger and lower tendencies of your 
nature to the acquisition of wealth and carnal ease, 
you are seeking to spend your earthly life in glorifying 
God through the service of His Gospel, and that you 
look for rewards that have no meaning nor measure 
to the world. 

Be strong and of a good courage. Keep your life 
in that spiritual sphere, where your hopes and encour- 
agements will be ever before your eyes, and where 
consequently weariness and despondency will be never 
known. Walk closely with God, so that the guidance 
and protection of His holy arm may be ever felt. 
Avoid and despise the maxims and methods of the 
world, while you fill your soul with the principles and 
power of the sacred Word, and then, when the short 
campaign for Christ's truth is over and you are sum- 
moned to the triumph and the home eternal, you will 
enter the heavenly gates neither unknown nor alone, 
your way heralded by those angelic hosts who have 
been your unseen helpers through your earthly labors, 
and your train composed of those ransomed souls 
who received from your lips the message that enfran- 
chised them. 



THE 

AGES BEFORE MOSES 

A SERIES OF LECTURES 

ON 

THE BOOK OF GENESIS. 

By JOHN MONRO GIBSON, D.D., 

PASTOR OF THE SECOND PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH, CHICAGO 



THESE lectures on the book of Genesis, delivered during tho 
present Winter, on Sunday afternoons, in Farwell Hall, 
Chicago, before large audiences, are designed to com- 
bine the advantages of continuous exposition with those 
of topical presentation of the truth. It is not a series 
of selected themes from the book, but an attempt to present the 
main teachings of that interesting part of Scripture in the order 
and proportion assigned them in the Word of God. The elements 
of time and historical perspective have been carefully kept in view in 
the arrangement of the matter and the grouping of the facts ; and it is 
hoped that this mode of treatment will materially aid the Bible stu- 
dent in obtaining comprehensive views of truth, and recognizing the 
unity and progress of the Divine "thoughts and ways " in the salva- 
tion of the world from sin. While the main object has been the 
presentation of the positive spiritual teaching of the book, no oppor- 
tunity has been intentionally missed of dealing with current objec- 
tions and difficulties. 

"The Ages before Moses," of which the lectures treat, are the geo- 
logic age, the Eden times, the Antediluvian age, the post-diluvian age 
between Noah and Abraham, and the Patriarchal Era. The relations 
between the truth unfolded in these early ages and the later revela- 
tions, especially those of the New Testament, have been kept in view 
throughout, so that by the study of Genesis as much light as possible 
might be thrown upon the rest of the Bible. 

The first two lectures of the course, " Concerning Difficulties and 
Objections," and " The Perspective of the Bible," deal with general 
principles of very great importance in the study and use of the Bible. 

One handsome Volume, 12mo, cloth, 258 pages. Price, $1.25. 

May be obtained at the bookstores ; or, will be sent by mail, 
post-paid, on receipt of '$1.25, by the publishers, 

ANSON D. F. RANDOLPH & CO., 900 BROADWAY, 
Cor. 20TH Street, New York. 



TEE PILQRIJ\i PSALJH8. 

AN 

EXPOSITION OF THE SONGS OF DEGREES. 

BY THE 

IREV- SAMUEL COSZ, 

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY 

REV. MARVIN R. VINCENT, D.D., NEW YORK. 



A rare and precious book. The exposition is fully abreast of the times, 
accurate and clear, with no parade of critical learning. It is scholarly with- 
out pedantry, spiritual without cant, and delightful without cloying. The 
Psalms are given in an excellent and elegant translation, which, however, is 
rather after the author's own spirit, than in a catholic and cVorless style, 
and is rather the better for it. The sense of the authorized version is never 
departed from without good reason. The style of writing is especially 
charming.— S. S. Times. 

The Psalms (120 to 134) which are known to us as "Sonsrs of Degrees 1 ' 
form as it were a little book by themselves. The author regards them, with 
most commentators, as songs sung by the Hebrews in their journeys to 
Jerusalem to attend the feasts. If the author's congregation did not listen 
with delight to these charming expositions it must be a congregation of 
strange dullness. Each one is the work of an artist, and contains a transla- 
tion of the Psalm, a sketch of the time and the scenes in which it was probably 
composed, a sympathetic and skillful exposition, and an explanation of its 
fitness, etc. The style is not only beautiful, but delicately adapted to the 
spirit of the songs with which the author is dealing. We heartily commend 
the volume.— The Watchman (Boston). 

Mr. Cox's work will, we venture to say, open up to many of his readers, 
truths which they never saw before. He gives the results of a sound scholar- 
ship, and the fruits of a rich imagination, one which has ripened interfer- 
ence. We commend this book to all.— The Churchman (N. Y.) 

To most persons, exposition is as dry as a dictionary, but we venture to 
Bay that whoever will give one or two of his best Sunday hours to the *' Pilgrim 
Psalms," will find it one of the juiciest he ever read, and as sweet a one too. 
The author throws a wonderful light on the tl Songs," but better than this is 
the light which he makes them throw on us and our times.— Religious Herald 
(Richmond). 

Full of the treasures of Christian experience.— Christian at Work, 

Can not fail to be of service to every thoughtful and devout reader.— 
Congregation alis t. 

Scholarly and at the same time popular Even the titles which the 

author places over the chapters are at once beautiful and appropriate— thua, 
" The 3oug of the Start," " The Song of the Arrival," " The Song of the 
Elome," followed by "The Song of the Farm."— Christian Intelligencer, 

12mo, Cloth. $1 
ANSON D. F. RANDOLPH & COMPANY, 
900 Broadway, Cor. 20th St., New York. 

May be obtained of the Booksellers, or will be sent by mail, post-paid, db 
eceipt of the price, by the Publishers. 



4I Surpassingly useful sententious and sensible. Our opinion of it is very high. Buv 
the work at once.—C. H. Spurgeon. * * 

kk Furnishes in a single commentary the characteristics of several, with features net 
tc be met with in any one."— 'Presbyterian Herald. 

kt V/^f' £°l >ular and entertaining commentary with which we are acauainted"— 
N. Y. Observer. * •«***•*• 




THE 



Biblical Museum 

CONSISTING OP 

Notes— Critical, Homiletic, and Illustrative—on the Holy Scriptures, forming a Complete 
Commentary on an Original Plan, especially designed for Ministers, Bible Students 
and Sunday-school Teachers. By James Comper Gray, Author of "The Class and 
1 he Desk. 

NEW TESTAMENT DIVISION. 

NOW COMPLETE. 
Volume I. Matthew and Mark. 

Volume II. Luke and John. 

Volume III. Acts and Romans. 

Volume IV. Corinthians to Philemon. 

Volume V. Hebreivs to Revelation 

with Copious Index to the 5 Volumes, 



OLD TESTAMENT DIVISION. 

{To be co7npleted in eight volumes?) 

VOLUMES NOW READY. 
Volume I. Genesis and Exodus. 

Volume II. Leviticus. Numbers, and Deuteronomy. 
Volume III. Joshua to Samuel. 

Volume IV. Kings and Chronicles. 
Volume V. Ezra to Job. 

The value of this Work to Ministers and Sunday-School Teachers consists in this, that 
besides explanatory and critical notes, marginal references, explanations and derivations 
of words, literary, chronological, and analytical notes, etc., etc., each verse or group of 
verses is accompanied by suitable Anecdote or Illustration. Thus a most complete 
commentary is presented to the reader, as well as the most perfect Museum of Anecdote 
and Illustration that has ever yet been published, with additional advantage of the whole 
of the material being so arranged as to be instantly accessible under the passage of Scrip 
ture referred to. 



12mo, cloth, 384 PP- each, $1-25 per Volume, 

(sold separately). 

Either or all of the Volumes sent by mail or express, prepaid, on re- 
ceipt of price by the publishers, 

ANSON D. F EANDOLPH & Cb., 900 Broadway, New York 



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